• As the events of the world continue to deepen into an unprecedented state, I have been sitting with the question of service.

    What is it to serve in these times of crisis?

    How do we give what we have—if indeed we have space to give—in the midst of these extraordinary times?

    My thoughts crystalized last week as I sat in ritual by the fire outside my home. During my vigil I listened to a question and answer session with futurist Jordan Hall. And it was in one of his answers that things started to come together.

    He provided a mytho-poetic frame that helped me make sense of the strong intuition that I wrote about in my previous article—that this was a time to double down on the change work that so many of us are dedicated to.

    And so it this article, I will extend those ideas, and speak to the question of service, leaning on the scaffolding that Hall provided.

    For I continue to feel a deep conviction that not only is there a great opportunity before us, but that the changes that can be made are considerable.

    But to answer the question of how we are asked to serve in these times, we must first understand the dynamic of change itself.

    The Hero’s Journey

    Mythopoetic maps give us—if we are able to grasp their nature—the blueprints for the deep dynamics of reality.

    The mythopoetic map that charts the nature of change is the Hero’s Journey.

    This journey at its essence, is the consensual adventure through the cycle of Order and Chaos, such that the old is destroyed, and the new can be born.

    The Hero in the myth leaves the Order of their village—stable society and life—because of a call from beyond. When they consent to the call, and step outside of what they know they enter the domain of Chaos—the trials and initiations that stretch them beyond their competency, preparing them for the culminating fight with the mythical dragon.

    The dragon is the symbol of what the adventurer is most afraid of—whether consciously or not. It is Chaos condensed into a great enemy who seeks the Hero’s destruction.

    But it is through the fight with this dragon that the Hero is reborn. The old self, the one that lived in ignorant bliss in the village, is slain. And from the ashes of the old, the new arises. The Hero, is simultaneously destroyed and remade.

    As they come to terms with who they now are, the inner transformation becomes complete. They integrate the unconscious gifts and treasure that they recovered by facing that which they were most afraid of—the dragon— and become a new whole.

    And now, changed, they return to the village—to Order, to society— ready to serve in a whole new way.

    This is the journey of individual transformation.

    It is not a single journey. It is a constant cycling of Order and Chaos. If we are sensitive to invitation, it is the process by which we are constantly re-made.

    This journey occurs on micro-scales—the process of learning a new skill, feeling the pull to try it, coming up against your incompetence, facing the heart of your fear, and coming out the other side more skilled than you were ready to engage anew.

    This journey also operates on existential levels. These are the great times of change, when we must face the very notion of who we are, and have great swathes of our identity destroyed, such that the truer aspects of ourselves have the room to grow and become real.

    For those of us dedicated to the path—to becoming who we are asked to be—this cycle is part of the work. A foundational aspect of our job.

    This is the way we are change, and become agents of change in the larger world.

    But we live in unprecedented times. The territory we live within, and must travel through, has changed fundamentally.

    Chronos and Kairos

    The ancient Greeks had two words for time, Chronos and Kairos.

    Chronos is linear time. It is chronological. It proceeds in an ordered and predictable way from before to after. This is “business as usual”.

    Kairos is the time between time, the pregnant moment. This is the time when Chaos descends, time bends, and what was normal falls apart.

    As I listened to Hall last week by the fire, he said something, which struck me deeply. The more I’ve thought about it since, the more I realized he was absolutely right. His point was this.

    For those of us whose work is dedicated to change, Chronos is a time of limited return-on-investment. The structures of Order are tight, leaving little room for the crow bar of transformation to find purchase. Everything is working. Why would we need to change?

    But when the time of Kairos begins, those structures crack and crumble. The openings are created. The deeper and wider transformational work has the conditions it needs to gain purchase.

    That time is now. For we are living in a time of great Kairos.

    And now, the Hero’s Journey is flipped on its head.

    During times of Kairos, Order and Chaos are reversed. Now, the village from which the hero comes—society at large—is in the domain of Chaos. The Order of society has disintegrated, and the mythical village is in disarray.

    And so the Hero now makes a different journey. This time it is to leave the Chaos of society so as to build new Order out in the hinterlands, at the edge of what is known.

    The old structures have come to the end of their lifetime, and the new order that will replace them must be built. This building will be done by those who did their preparatory work—the myriad individual hero cycles—during the previous time of Chronos.

    Your choice amidst the crisis

    We are in crisis. The time of Kairos has begun, and the world is falling apart.

    How can your serve?

    There are two essential roles. And your fit for each stems from your relationship to the crisis.

    The word for crisis in Chinese contains two separate characters. One of them is the word for threat, the other the word for opportunity. It is this difference that points to the difference in our role.

    How are you relating to this crisis?

    Are you anxious and afraid? Are you struggling to keep your head above water, whether psychologically, economically or otherwise? Are you plugged into the air of fear, struggling to see the end, and hoping that help comes soon?

    If so, then Kairos has thrown you into the individual hero’s journey I outlined above. The one that asks you to face your own inadequacies and fears. The invitation is to face that which you’ve spent peacetime avoiding.

    Now is the time to find help from those who are resourced. Now is the time to get support and help as you venture into the depths of yourself in search of the stability that eludes you. Maybe it’s time to take a good hard look at the way you create money. Maybe it’s time to really face the fact that you’re not doing the work you feel called to. These are the questions that want to be gently encountered, as you do the short-term work of finding Order amongst the Chaos that this crisis has erupted into.

    How best can you serve yourself?  Put your own oxygen mask on first. Always you first, then you build the strength to help those immediately around you—your friends and family.

    And then there is the second role.

    If instead, you are predominantly tuned to the opportunity frequency of the crisis, then your role is different. Are you excited by the chaos that is ensuing? Does your energy rise as you consider all the things that could change as a consequence of this crisis?

    If you’ve done your work during Chronos—if you’ve run through the hero cycles that strengthen and empower you, then now comes the time to jump into the breach.

    If so, then Kairos is inviting you into the breach.

    Now is the time to step in.

    For the underlying cracks in the Order of society have become great gaping fissures. And you have juice to give—power and skill that you’ve diligently developed—how are you called to give it in service?

    I’ve spoken with friends and peers over the last few weeks who have been doing exactly this—stepping into the breach. My friend Mark trained 500 yoga teachers to take their classes online. My business mentor Rand has gathered his community of CEOs each week to explore how they can go on the offense, in service to their customers. My partners and I in my other business are mobilizing to offer our community resources to deepen their own leadership.

    I feel the tremor in my legs as I consider the things that have been slowly percolating over the last year. I feel that unmistakable sense of vulnerability as I too prepare myself to step into the unknown—the places that I have feared to tread.

    How about you?

    What is your role?

    How are you asked to serve during these times of crisis?

    Is your deepest service to bed down, get help, and tool up?

    Or is your deepest to service to stand up, step out and help build the new?

    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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