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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The Depths are Here to Teach Us

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Surrender to the Descent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    How to Go to the Bottom of the Well

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

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

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

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

    Close your eyes.

    And trust God as you’re taken down.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

    Ewan Townhead

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  • Today marks a threshold for me.

    After a five-year hiatus, a deep journey into business leadership, some life-changing events, and several months of preparation, I’m re-opening my coaching shop.

    I feel so grateful and happy to be here once more.

    But to explain why, I need to tell you a story.

    When you drift off track

    Have you ever noticed that life has this way of helping you out when you drift off track? It throws stuff at you to help you find the way again. The twist is that the help doesn’t always feel helpful at first. It can fuck things up, make it harder.

    And yet help it is, and back onto the path it ushers us, whether gently or forcefully.

    Over the last year, I’ve been given a deep lesson in this principle. Because boy did I drift off track.

    It’s easily done. And in fact (and perhaps infuriatingly) it turns out that drifting off track is also the path too. Because all the detours you take and the circles you spin in, are of course part of the journey. We have to go off track to rediscover the track.

    It was in 2020 when I finished up with my last coaching client. I knew I needed to step back for a while. I loved my clients. They were feeling deeply served. Yet, somehow I couldn’t fit myself into the same box anymore, and didn’t know what the new box was.

    So I stopped coaching. And I stopped writing.

    I always planned to come back to it when things settled down and got easier. Which (spoiler alert) never came!

    This was the same year I stepped in as co-owner and co-leader of Coaches Rising, a company two friends of mine had founded together, and for which I’d run the marketing since 2014.

    Coaches Rising is an amazing company. It was an early pioneer in online programs for coaches, creating advanced coach trainings on transformational topics, led by world-class faculty. Thousands of coaches take its training programs every year

    Growth and divorce in business

    2020 and covid turned out to be a big year for Coaches Rising. As the world sheltered in place and turned to the internet for social connection and deeper experience, our programs exploded.  And my coaching fell firmly out of sight as the workload increased.

    Then in the autumn of 2021, one of my partners (and co-founder of the company) told us he wanted to step out of the company and move onto new things.

    None of us had expected this, and we went on a steep learning curve as we learned how to do “business divorce”.

    One of the things divorce means, is a difficult negotiation of value where the party that’s leaving inevitably thinks the company is worth more than the party that’s staying.

    Alongside this is the emotional letting go, and the gaping hole that this person leaves behind in the work of the company.

    This takes months. And meanwhile, there’s still a company to run. Any business owner who’s been through this experience knows how hard it is.

    We made it. We remained friends on the other side. We all moved on.

    Which for me and Joel (the remaining co-founder) meant the challenge of taking the company into a new phase.

    I should say who Joel is, because he is not simply the founder of Coaches Rising, he’s my soul brother. We moved to Amsterdam together in 2008 in search of “conscious community”, and we’ve long been each other’s first phone call when the shit hits the fan.

    Business leadership and soul pain

    It was a big change for both of us.  We took on new roles and responsibilities, we started to revision the company, we hired new people for our growing team.

    Some people say you should never go into business with your friends. I feel the opposite of this. I only want to do it if I can do it with friends.

    But it does come with its challenges! And Joel and I had them.

    We had wins, we had losses. We navigated challenges. We matured parts of the company that greatly needed it.

    I learned more than I can write here. Things like…

    • How to create and read profit-and-loss statements, so we keep our fingers on the financial pulse of the company.
    • How to lead a team – empowering others to do the work allowing me to direct from higher up (rather than just doing everything myself).
    • That I have a tough and resilient soldier inside who doesn’t stop and will give everything for the cause.
    • How to turn off the worry voice when I get up at 3am for a piss, so I can get back to sleep rather than lying awake stressing.
    • How to take stinging feedback without collapsing or defending (so you can actually hear it and grow from the experience).

    I grew immeasurably, learned deep embodied and practical lessons about the art of business. I discovered strength I never knew I had.

    And then I burned out.

    First I got sick, and couldn’t shift it for weeks, kicking around in bed feeling guilty about all the other people who were running the ship.

    I went deep. I asked for guidance, I had a long hard look at myself. I listened to the answers I received. I hired a new person to run the operations of my marketing team — I started to create more space for myself.

    And then I got even sicker—a reoccurrence of a chronic condition I thought I was over. One evening a year ago, it all came to a head. I still remember it vividly…

    I’m on the floor of my cabin, using all my spiritual and somatic skills to try and surf the extreme pain and fear I’m in.

    I surrender. I let myself fall, all the way to the bottom of the well.

    And there amongst the pain, I hear the truth.

    “Ewan, you have to stop.”

    She said it with deep love and great urgency.

    I heard it in the centre of my heart, and it broke me open. I was burned out. And I had to stop.

    This was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to admit.

    I thought I was immune to it. Too self-aware and self-sovereign to fall foul of such a thing! Right up to the point I realised I already had.

    But admit it I did, which lead to some vulnerable conversations with Joel and the rest of the team. I felt ashamed – like I’d failed. And I felt completely and utterly exhausted.

    So, I took time off.

    The first months took me so deep. Into the core of myself and all the knotted trauma that I was oblivious to. My practice got deep too. I spent many hours on the mat. I faced some of my most hidden and vulnerable parts. I learned how to unwind my clenched and exhausted nervous system. Which involved lots of body practice, lots of baking, and lots of playing around the house with my son.

    Most importantly, I began to see the elephant that had been standing in the room all along.

    Truth that sets you free

    If you’ve followed my work for a while, you might know that I see the entrepreneur as being made up of (at least) 3 core archetypes – the Artist, the Merchant, and the Seeker. This is a map that came out of me, and also one that guides me.

    It was my business mentor Rand who helped me see the elephant.

    We were talking one afternoon. I was messy. Confused.

    “What led you to this?” He asked.

    I fumbled around for a while before he turned my own map upon me.

    “You’ve overdosed on the Merchant, and you’ve suppressed the Artist.”

    The truth. I’d been killing myself for the cause, being a business leader. And I’d left my art behind.

    Our conversation gave me the most powerful of experiences—like I was caught and freed at the same time. I couldn’t escape the truth. And yet it opened the way.

    I knew I couldn’t go back to the same thing– soldiering on, hoping one day to have enough time to get back to “my work”.

    I knew I had to reclaim and recommit to my own art – my writing and coaching.

    Joel and I had some difficult and very honest conversations when we met to talk about the future. It was a process that took us both deep into truth. And at the end of it we agreed to part ways.

    So, we went through another business divorce.

    But this time it was me leaving. It’s challenging enough to go through this with any business partner. It was made so much harder for me when the person I’d normally call to counsel me, is the one sitting on the other side of the negotiation table.

    These things are rarely easy, and it takes time, but we did it with generosity, honesty and grace.

    So indeed, life has this way of helping you out when you drift off track. It’s just that the help doesn’t always feel helpful at first.

    Back on the path

    From burnout to break up. And then back onto the path. But of course, everything is different now. As Heraclitus said: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

    I feel different in (seemingly) paradoxical ways. Stronger, and also more sensitive. More driven, yet more relaxed. More confident, and also humbler.

    And as I said earlier, the thing about drifting off the path, is that it’s also part of the path. My detour took me through a deep period of Merchant training. My knowledge of business has tripled during the last 5 years. And I feel blessed to be able to bring all that experience into the work I do helping entrepreneurs.

    The irony is not lost on me. The fact that I repressed the deep call to coach people, by running a company that trained coaches.

    And yet, over the last few months as I’ve re-visioned my work, put pieces together, re-written this website, and started writing and coaching again, a feeling has returned that I feared was lost.

    It’s the feeling of being where I’m supposed to be. “This is why I’m here.”

    Back on the path.

    And so, it’s with great delight and deep gratitude that I can say…

    My shop is open for business again

    What does this mean?

    I’ll be publishing regularly here on this blog (if you want to know when new stuff comes out, make sure you’re signed up on my mailing list below).

    And I’m opening my coaching shop again.

    So if you’re interested in coaching (or know someone who is), I’m taking on new clients.

    If you don’t know what kind of coaching I do, I coach entrepreneurs—freelancers and founders. I work at the intersection of business, spirituality and creativity. I’m part guide, part advisor, and I help you walk your path, growing your work and business in the way that calls you.

    You can read more about coaching here.

    If you made it all the way to the end here, thank you. Your presence means a lot to me.

    Ewan Townhead

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  • For as long as I can remember I’ve had dreams. My mind seems to naturally conjure future visions of how amazing things could be.

    This is a double-edged sword.

    On the one hand, it’s a powerful imaginal capacity. It underpins key parts of my mystical and shamanic work. It allows me to understand and see other people’s visions (great for coaching people). It gives possibility to life.

    On the other hand, it’s easy to conjure the picture of something, and way harder to actually create it here in the 3D. This can lead to a habit of living in my magical imagination, rather than doing the work in the physical world.

    Therefore, I’ve spent many years studying and experimenting with different approaches to “realizing your dreams” or “reaching your goals”.

    One of the most important conclusions I’ve drawn is that this endeavor is best seen as a journey — not just as a nice metaphor, but because it most closely resembles the actual territory.

    So, if like me, you can struggle to bridge the big picture vision, with the small practical steps, this is for you.

    How on earth do I do this?

    The voices start chattering. All the worries and challenges spiral into an imagined nightmare.

    “It’s too hard.”

    “I’m not good enough”.

    This kind of stuff normally comes up when I’m thinking about the thing I always think about. How to step deeper into the arena and dare to boldly show my hand. I’m holding an image of a glorious potential. As I conjure it my soul and heart hum to its tune.

    But today, like other days, the negative voices seem to be winning out.

    We all know that they’re not to be trusted as the authorities they profess to be. We all wish they’d pipe down and get in their place. They feed the doubt.

    “How on earth do I do this?”

    Which is just a stone’s throw from “I can’t do this.”

    So let’s map this out. For as I said, I’ve come to believe that these things are not simply metaphorical journeys. The structure of the journey is embedded in the way our body-mind works with this stuff. I think this is because they both have the same deeper root, the transformational cycle from which they’re both modelled.

    Here’s a way of looking at it.

    Corners you can’t see past

    I see a future vision, of how my life could be. It comes to me in a moment of calm perhaps, or a heightened state of consciousness.

    Insight. Seeing.

    I’m inspired—the vision lights something up and I feel a bubbling excitement.

    Then, perhaps the next day, I sit down to start working on it. And I realize how big or hard it feels. So I stop. From my limited perspective, it looks like it’s a long way off, in fact it’s so far off I can’t even see it. The vision euphoria starts to wane, and the quest seems more difficult and less appealing.

    If I were to zoom out and see like the eagle sees, I would be able to see a winding pathway that leads from my starting location all the way through the landscape to the location of my vision. In fact, I might see an entire root system of pathways, spreading out from here to there.

    Now when I zoom back in again, and view this through the eyes of my human self, I see a forest of trees before me. I remember the route I saw from above, and now I see a pathway running out in front of me. But I can still only see so far. At some point the pathway bends and I can’t see past it.

    I can’t see past the corner.

    Once again, this is a metaphorical truth embedded in the life journey. It’s the way our human mind makes sense of travelling through time and space.

    The corner is the future location that you can’t see past.

    For example, “I know I’ve got to get on a plane and go to this thing. But I truly have no idea what to do when I get there.”

    That’s the point that you can’t see past.

    The only way to navigate the journey is to take the steps along the pathway, until you reach the corner, at which point your view will open up once again and you can work out your new heading.

    The reason the vision you seek can feel so far away and so impossible, is that it lies around 11 corners.

    I can’t see past the 1st corner, let alone the 11th.

    I can’t see it, because the person who walks around that 11th corner is different to the one standing here. He’s the product of having walked around the preceding 10 corners. And been changed by each of them.

    So, the gameplan in its first instance, is to focus on the steps, and not the corners.

    Steps along the path

    Pick the direction (which implies the destination) and see the pathway. See the steps that follow on from one another, and end up at the corner you can’t see past.

    I go in a North-Easterly direction, get across that muddy river, up the bank on the other side to the tree line, then I can see how to tackle the big hill.

    Or, I’ve got to finish the copy drafts, find some new images, get some feedback, work it over again, upload everything to WordPress then I’ll be able to see how to announce this thing.

    I know enough about the direction and path that I can take. I know the steps that get me to the next corner. And then it’s a case of take those steps. The first. Then another. Then another. Taking consistent steps is much more important than the size of them.

    I learned a profound lesson from Jordan Peterson about this. The steps you commit to must be small enough that you can actually do them (over ambition raises the risk you in fact do nothing). The telltale sign of an appropriately small step is that you feel kind of stupid aiming for it.

    “Like really, that’s all I have in me?”

    Jordan describes a man who he worked with many years before whose life was a big mess. His first goal was to tidy his room (which was also a big mess – go figure). That was his corner – having a tidy room. And his first step? All he could manage for the first week, was to take out the vacuum cleaner, put it by his door, and look at it every day.

    That was the first step for him. The one he could take and did take.

    The work of the manifester

    The work is to keep seeing the next step, and taking it even when it seems stupid, and especially when you feel stupid for struggling with it.

    Even one step each day adds up to something bigger than you might think. As the seemingly meagre rhythm stabilizes, you find your groove and start to notice the sensation of momentum.

    This is when you feel like you’re being pulled along (not simply pushing yourself forward). Like a river current that adds its power to your movement.

    And before too long you’ve reached the first corner. And then you’re around the next few corners, and things look quite different.

    So, if the vision feels too big, or the challenge too great, and you don’t know how on earth you’ll ever get there…just head for the first corner. Take the steps, especially when you feel a bit stupid for lowering your targets.

    Trust that the one who keeps taking steps, is the one that makes it to the next corner. And trust that the one who has made it there, will be equipped get to the next.

    Until you realize you’ve reached your destination. And you can enjoy it for those glorious moments, until the next journey calls your attention once again.

    Ewan Townhead

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  • This is written for the empaths – those whose sensitive hardware can make this world feel so loud, confusing and overwhelming.

    I wrote this guide because I’ve struggled to survive in this world as an empath. And I know I’m not the only one. I’ve grown tired of seeing my empathic nature as a liability that I must compensate for. This is a common experience for empaths.

    And yet, as this story will reveal, the problem lies not in the intensity of the world we live in, nor in our own apparent design faults.

    I believe the way to truly survive as an empath in this world, is to realise none of it has design faults, and that the same capacities that seem like such liabilities, are in fact super-powers that are waiting for you to unlock them.

    The way to do so? A journey into yourself of course.

    Who is the empath?

    Empath – one who has a high capacity for feeling/sensing. The root of the word empathy means to be “in feeling”. This is a universal human capacity. An empath is one who has a particularly high capacity for the felt experience of reality.

    You’re born this way. In fact, it’s something that you already are as a soul (most likely). To become an empath takes a great deal of work on the part of the soul. Lifetimes of lessons. So, in the grand scheme of things, you could think of yourself as “high level” in this particular ability (which is a good counterpoint to the common feeling of it being a disability).

    Perhaps this fact helps relieve you of some sense of fault – the idea that you’ve messed up your own nervous system, or you’re just built wrong. It’s actually quite the opposite.

    In our current world culture, empaths are often people carrying significant trauma. Indeed it can seem as though the two are fused, or caused by each other. That’s kind of true.

    It’s more like we’ve set up this trial for ourselves as incarnated beings, where we’re lovingly forced to struggle in some particular way with these capacities – and through walking into pain time and again, we force ourselves to learn who we are and where our gifts truly lie. The one doing the forcing – who set this thing up? You.

    We’ve got to go through these trials to be conscious of those gifts. To claim them and therefore wield them with consciousness, remembering who we are.

    To be an empath in today’s world is no easy feat. Especially if you want to make a splash with your contributions – make a difference. Our culture neither trains us well to use these gifts, nor creates conditions where empaths thrive. Indeed, our rational culture usually sees empathic abilities as soft, weak, fragile, dramatic etc. The modern world occurs as loud and often overwhelming. It’s easy to become entwined in victim stories about all of this. And to feel misunderstood and defective.

    Part of my own challenge has been to admit to myself how sensitive and empathic I truly am. It doesn’t really go with the outfit I’ve been trying to wear in the world. But as I’ve got over myself (and into myself), I’ve come to see, with increasing grace, the power and blessings of these capacities. And that it is in fact possible to reach a place of harmony in your relationship to the world, where you feel like you’re navigating the ocean of life, rather than being drowned by it.

    The following four principles are I believe, universally applicable to empaths. The first two are more like skills or capacities, the second two more like strategies. They all require practice.

    If you want to make a difference, use the gifts you possess and feel empowered in the journey rather than overwhelmed by its magnitude, these principles are keys that help you unlock yourself.

    One — Learn how to self-regulate

    I believe this is the core survival skill for an empath. Because as an empath in this world, you’re going to get knocked out of equilibrium (and your self-sense) a lot. In other words, you’re easily triggered!

    Something happens, and suddenly you’re feeling all this stuff in yourself, and in the other people around you, and it’s hard to tell whose is whose and what is what. Your head spins, your body goes into fight, flight, freeze. It’s all so much!

    This happens principally because you feel a lot — you experience a lot of impact from the things that happen – it really resonates inside of your body-mind. Add in all that trauma your family line has been carrying for generations, add in all the ways you were fucked up as a child, add in all the karmic lessons you wanted to come and face, and you get a powerful mixture just ready to trigger and overwhelm you, greasing the descent into “here we fucking go again”.

    This is all happening in a post-covid world where things seem the same but are definitely not. It’s like the gods switched the energy field of the planet when we were all in lockdown, creating a pressure cooker of what’s not working, thinning the veil and spotlighting all our unconsciousness.

    This all adds up to a potent dojo for self-regulation practice.

    Self-regulation is the capacity to find equilibrium in your own nervous system, in the moment.

    One of my teachers Michaela describes it like a sheet of thick handmade paper. Your nervous system is the paper, and through your upbringing, it got all screwed up and bent out of shape.

    You can meditate in the forest for 3 days and smooth the whole thing out, and it all looks flat. But the moment you walk back into the world, and someone says that thing again, those same crease lines show up once more.

    You can’t change the crease lines says Michaela. You can’t get rid of them. But you can learn how to smooth yourself out. This is the capacity for self-regulation.

    When you know how to do this, you can smooth things out as or after they occur. This empowers you to work with the challenges and trials your life is throwing at you, rather than feeling overwhelmed by the magnitude of all the fucking feelings.

    This can only be done in the body.

    It takes a lot of work, or at least it’s taken me a great deal of work to get to a place where I’m (at least) competent.

    It can only happen in the body because that’s the location of the actual hardware, and therefore all the latent capacities and buried traumas. You can’t talk or think your way through this.

    You have to go down and in, and come bottom up. There are a hundred different approaches. My own path has involved a lot of embodied yogic/tantric practice, lots of bodywork (a kind that teaches you how to self-regulate), different kinds of relational practice, psychotherapy, shamanic healing.

    Whatever the method that works for you and your being, the key is to spend time exploring the felt sense of your own body, and particularly the places you habitually don’t feel. I think it helps to do this in a safe space, on the mat or with a professional.

    The key to empowerment here is developing the capacity to self-regulate in the moment. This is the power move. You have enough self-awareness to be able to notice yourself getting activated (or that you’re already activated), and enough skill to change your emotional and energetic state — regulating your own nervous system.

    This actually requires a kind of “going with it” (rather than against it), allowing the energy to flow without swamping you.

    In other words, you notice when you’re getting swamped, and know how to get your head back above the surface.

    I think the most basic form of this is to pause and take a breath (or three). It’s like a remembering – “oh, I can slow myself out of the tailspin”, which opens up the space around you, rather than fixating on the rabbit hole you’re feeling sucked down.

    When I do this now, it kicks into gear a whole lot of instinctual things I do with my body, breath, energy and feeling. These are things that I’ve developed over time non-rationally, lying on the table with my bodyworker Markus, or exploring on the floor of my practice room.

    However you develop this capacity to self-regulate, I believe it’s the first key to surviving this world as an empath. Without it, you’re liable to be a victim of overwhelm. With it, you’re empowered to explore the intensity of your experience, uncovering deep understanding about the nature of yourself, the world, and your place in it.

    Two — Develop your boundaries and barriers

    Boundaries and barriers (which are different) are the second survival capacity for an empath. They combat our deep tendency to get entwined and lost in the feeling state of everything happening around us, putting our attention on everyone else, losing touch with our own self.

    A powerful empath walks into a room, and whether they’re conscious of it or not, feels the whole thing. Their nervous system is set up to tune into the emotional and energetic state of the place and people. They literally feel the room.

    A skilled and conscious empath can distinguish between their own energetic state, and that of others. Through regulation of their own nervous system, they can become a beacon of higher consciousness, even changing the energetic state around them.

    Without the capacity to create boundaries and barriers these situations often result in an experience of overwhelm and suffering. The tumult of emotions, unsaid feelings, unconscious behaviours and intertwining energy fields results in a confusion for the empath, who cannot tell whose is whose, and falls into the same old story that the world is too loud and too much.

    The root solution to this challenge is boundaries and barriers.

    Boundaries

    Boundaries are about expressing to someone else, where the walls of your castle lie.

    “No, I don’t want you to talk to me like this anymore.”

    “No, I’m not going to do it.”

    “No, I don’t want you to come closer.”

    Your boundaries are in a sense, natural—they are what lie at the edge of your own kingdom. They have an “authentic” location. However for many of us (and especially empaths) they’re often hard to locate. It often takes someone trying to cross one, to show you where it actually is. And the moment they do, you feel it.

    Boundaries are fuelled in part by the energy of anger. Not aggression. But the natural anger that protects your sovereign space. Your own ability to say ‘no’ is connected to the predator in you who is quite happy to kill a possibility or create a wounded reaction.

    It’s an explicit naming of where the line around your territory is. And when someone then respects that line, you create an experience of safety and sovereignty for yourself.

    Boundaries come from a lot of relational practice – finding and owning your “no” with the people in your life.

    Declaring a boundary – saying no – always starts with feeling the truth of it inside yourself. It’s a body sense before it’s a decision. For example you can ask “does my body want to be in this room right now?” Yes or no? That’s a felt sense, not a rational decision.

    The higher level practice is one of truth telling – being so sovereign that you only say yes to the things you genuinely and somatically feel a yes to, and saying no to all the things that you don’t actually want to do. That puts the cat among the pigeons.

    Barriers

    While a boundary requires a naming – an actual communication of where the line is —barriers are done without a word. It’s the thing you do on an airplane or a bus when you just close yourself to the people around you and sit in your own space.

    It is always and already in your own sovereign power to actually own your own castle. Your energy field. This can be done in a moment.

    The goal is to seal yourself up in your own energy field. The feeling is like becoming denser – your own self is more concentrated in your bodily location.

    This is the opposite to the common state of an empath – having your feeling sensors out all over the room and world.

    Instead, you just sit in your own bubble. I’m me. I’m here.

    I do this by imagining myself contained in an energetic bubble, the feeling of just being me, sitting in the sphere of my own energy.

    It helps me feel at peace, safe, contained. I have the ground and space to follow my curiosity. I am protected from the intensity of the world around me. I can regulate the input and output.

    Barriers stop other people reading you, or unconsciously reacting to you. It’s not invisibility, though people in public places will probably pay much less attention to you. It’s more like you’re just there doing your thing, and then they can just do their thing.

    Barriers are also what protect you from psychic phenomena. A shaman or spiritual healer must have strong barriers to shield and protect them from the negative effects of any work they may undertake.

    In its most simple sense, strong barriers are the result of just being in your own energy field. When you inhabit all the different parts of you, and you know who you are, nothing comes in that you don’t know about, or consent to. The barrier becomes a perfect membrane that allows you to be you, and everyone else to be everyone else.

    Three – Be conscious of your energetic diet

    What you take in is what your body then has to digest. This is obvious in the case of our physical diet. The food we choose to eat is what our body then digests. This is equally true for our energetic diet – the relational input we’re receiving — the ideas, feelings and stories we take in.

    As relational beings, empaths are disproportionally affected by the quality and nature of the relationships they have. All the people who you have regular contact with impact your nervous system more deeply than most. Meaning: positive nourishing relationships feed you deeply, and negative draining relationships cost you highly.

    I think of this like relational energy input. Our system is designed to feel deeply, therefore each relational connection is attended to with a lot of consciousness (whether we’re aware of it or not!).

    And there has never been a time in known history when humans had quite this much relational connection in our daily lives. Unfortunately, most of it is connection with people we don’t know. For example, all the people suffering in a far-off country. Or the political leaders in such a such place. And these connections are mediated through screens in our pockets or on the desk.

    None of this plays to the strengths of an empath, who is designed to feel deeply, and influence the people who are around them.

    So, a key to survival is therefore: consciously limiting your nervous system input. Restricting the amount of relational connections you’re actively engaged in reduces the empathic load on your system. You don’t have to be connected into quite so many dramas.

    For example, I have realised reading the news is a net negative for me. As I tracked my experience after reading it, I realised that it resulted in my feeling worse 100% of the time. Never once did I flip onto the headlines, read about the carnage, and then feel better and more positive about myself and my day.

    My current practice is a 20 second skim of the headlines once per day. This seems to keep me informed about the facts, without getting infected by the polarised, vitriolic drama-porn.

    I can’t say where you should draw the line for yourself. I can say that I strongly encourage you to draw one.

    The same principle applies to personal relationships. Which are the connections that are a net negative for you? When you add it all up at the end, does it cost you energy or give you energy? Do you feel more alive and grateful after talking with someone? Or more tired and pessimistic? Your energy-body doesn’t lie.

    Empaths are built for relational connection. We’re so sensitive to the nuances of things, we feel natural compassion for those involved, and we think about it while we’re doing other things.

    What’s your inventory of relational connections that feed into your nervous system?  Which ones feed you? Which ones drain you?

    Four – Healing is not optional

    Empaths are generally carrying a whole bunch of trauma. It doesn’t really matter where it comes from, or what it is – the result is a great deal of difficulty and discomfort with being in the body. To be in a full feeling state for an empath, means being in touch with all the things that are hanging out down in the depths.

    So we learn to cope with the pain in our bodies. Our world – with it’s brilliantly powerful market system – has created an unprecedented variety of disembodiment options. From sugar packed foods, to drama filled TV, to addictive super computers running our social media input, the market has created a million ways for us to distract us from ourselves, and numb our feelings.

    The way out is of course through – down into and through your own body. And to learn to re-associate yourself with yourself means facing what you’re carrying.

    Whether it is coming to terms with what happened to you as a child, or unravelling what your family lines gave you, the healing of ourselves is a key part of the journey. The same gifts that make an empath feel challenged in life also hold the key to superpowers. The route to both the healing and the empowerment is through the body.

    I think therapy, and more traditional healing modalities are important, and often necessary. I think some of the most direct healing methodologies are shamanic and energetic – ones that work with the energy and life force of things, returning them to their rightful place.

    I confess, I used to think “healing” was woo-woo and dumb – something for folks who did unicorn mantras because they couldn’t hold down a career.

    Then my guides started facilitating me through shamanic healing processes, and I experienced the undeniable and strange power of it all.

    I don’t think you can survive in this world as an empath without committing to your own healing journey. The conditions make it impossible – you will suffer indescribably if you try.

    This is partly to do with the level of trauma we’re tasked with clearing as a species, and partly with the way the mechanics work. The healing journey not only knits up the wounds you carry, and reintegrates your sense of self, it teaches you, indeed shows you, where your deeper gifts lie.

    You came down here into this life with a particular purpose. And if you’re an empath then you also came here to help with the big collective purpose of healing up the millennia of trauma we’ve all built up. And specifically, you might well have volunteered to come and heal your own particular family lines, and childhood experiences.

    If you feel like that’s bullshit, and no one would willingly choose the amount of suffering you’ve had to endure, maybe it says more about how evolved you actually are as a soul, that you would choose to come and transmute it all. You must have the chops for it—some really big chops.

    Healing and integration create space for super-powers

    The dysregulated empath lives a life that is constantly on the edge of overwhelm. Things in your life swamp you, or threaten to. And so we’ve all learned to cope, find strategies that make it more manageable. Most of these are compensation strategies. They seek to make up for the short fall on one end, with more extension on the other. We think we’re too fucking fragile, so we heavily invest in the tough exterior. We’re scared of people disconnecting from us, so we work extra hard to be nice and likeable.

    The foundational fear is that it all becomes too much. Too much for little you to handle.

    These four principles are a basis for surfing the waters of life, rather than constantly drowning in them.

    As you develop the root ability to self regulate in the moment, the conscious you comes present. The one who can act in the face of the wave, rather than floundering. This gives a fundamental experience of empowerment.

    Boundaries and barriers are what teach us to distinguish between self and other, and to root in one’s own self first. These are both things empaths usually struggle with. This rooting in self further empowers you in your own sovereignty.

    As you’re able to regulate, keeping your feet in your own self, you get more choice about the waters you surf. So often we get so used to feeling overwhelmed, we don’t notice that we keep picking relational connections that actually overstimulate us. It becomes a weird kind of comfort zone. Choosing our energetic diet is like the hero choosing to walk their own path, knowing where to go and where to avoid.

    This entire process is a healing journey. It takes you into the heart of yourself, and all the ways you struggle to interface with life. The sooner we accept that, and commit to our own healing, the deeper the wounds we are able to reknit. And they go deep. Generations back. Incarnations back. And of course back into the deep pains of your own childhood.

    Healing is not optional. And it’s also not something you need to complete before you move forward. You don’t need to fix your brokenness first. It becomes fixed as you walk the path and engage with life.

    The integration of your own body and mind using these principles leads to a potent possibility for the empath: the use of their super-powers for the greater good, and the flourishing of their own life.

    The central shift is described beautifully by my body worker Markus. Once you learn how to self-regulate, you can begin to navigate. The capacity for regulation increases your opportunities to explore your sensations with curiosity and openness. To navigate the territory rather than be overwhelmed by it.

    The world on the other side feels fundamentally different. One of possibility rather than liability. There is a switch in outlook.

    Less: I’m a sensitive empath who is struggling with the overwhelm of this world that doesn’t understand me.

    More: I’m a highly developed empath who chose to come here to learn and help by doing my thing.

    Or in other words, less victim, more beautiful, awesome being.

    As the victim stories in me continue to melt and evaporate, I have experienced first-hand, capacities and powers that come online. Here are three that I believe are common for empaths.

    One – The super-power of intuition

    Empaths, as deep and sensitive feelers, are built to work intuitively. This is a powerful ability when unleashed. Unlike the thinking mind (which our culture generally considers the true mind), the intuitive mind is plugged into the territory of experience, rather than the map of experience.

    To think your way through a problem requires mapping the territory, making assessments based on past experience and knowledge, then running the different scenarios through your simulating imagination. This is the superpower beneath our culture, and therefore also it’s limitation.

    The intuitive mind does not think through the problem, it plugs into the territory – the actual energetic experience of it – and gains direct knowledge about it. With skill (knowing how to be pointed in your intention) and discernment (knowing what is noise and what is signal), your intuition can lead you to answers that according to the rational thinking mind, we have no right to know.

    This can be applied to the most practical of situations. When for example, considering an invitation to an event, the thinking mind can spend a long time computing the different rationales, considerations, possibilities. But when explored intuitively, you get direct data from the body.

    If you imagine being there, in the room, your body will tell you how it feels about it. It will know things about that place that you have no consciousness of.

    If you chase the gift of intuition further along the tracks you arrive at what we’d now call magical abilities, physic gifts. These are still treated with scepticism by our modern culture. They are, however perfectly native, and increasingly impatient about being let out once more.

    Two — The super-power of non-physical communication

    One of the root abilities of a shaman or psychic is their access to non-ordinary reality. While modern culture only believes in physical reality, there is a whole variety of worlds and dimensions accessible when you know how to look. As an empath, you have a particular sensitivity to the subtle dimensions, allowing you to sense what many would never notice.

    You can sense the actual spirit of a thing. And if you can sense it, you can communicate with it.

    A tree doesn’t have a mouth that physically talks, and they don’t have a neo-cortex that (we believe) enables them to think. However, through non-ordinary reality, you can absolutely talk to a tree, and discover it has a mind too.

    The same goes for spirit guides, deities, ancestors, celestial bodies etc.

    These abilities are sometimes called the “claires”: clairvoyance, clairaudience etc. These are the different channels through which we can communicate in this way. Some people “hear” in non-ordinary reality, a kind of telepathy with other beings (I am like this). Others “see” the non-ordinary realms in image, shape and colour. As an empath, you certainly “feel” the other dimensions.

    Underneath the survival strategies of the empath lies the ability to sense deep into reality, to know things our culture doesn’t even believe in.

    Three – The super-power of space change

    An empath has the capacity to walk into a room, and feel the room — to feel the energetic and emotional currents that are flowing through all the people and beings in that space. While in an untrained empath, this leads to overwhelm and overload, the integrated empath does something else. They don’t seek to tolerate the soup of sensations; they consciously influence the space.

    Without saying a word, you are able to consciously change the energy of a room or situation. This begins with changing your own energy, expanding your own field, earthing down into the core.

    The funky gunky feeling can be cleansed and cleaned. The tension acknowledged and given air to breathe. The darkness and negativity dissolved into light and love.

    Whatever you feel like your current level of skill may be, know that your hardware sets you up to command this level of influence. A fully empowered empath is a master of spatial energy, conducting the flow of the moment through their own body-mind.

    The practice is one of feeling yourself in your wholeness, then expanding to include the wider room in the same way you feel yourself. For example, feel yourself as a being of luminous love, sit in that direct experience, then expand the field of love to include everyone around you.

    This can radically change a conversation, or a room, or a situation.

    Closing thoughts

    Writing this has been a healing experience for me – to see how far I’ve come. I often don’t find this an easy world to be in, given the level of my sensitivity. And I know how deeply many of us struggle with these same challenges.

    Many has been the day I’ve railed at myself and God over the difficulty level of the game.

    “Holy fuck, why does it have to be this hard!?”

    Sometimes now, my guides will reply. “You’re finding it hard Ewan? Then make yourself soft.” Which is good advice for an empath. For in that softness lies all exquisite sensing ability that gives us such power.

    I feel it now as I imagine you reading these words. The softness. The compassion for us, and all the struggles we’re encountering.

    So I send you love and blessings, wherever you are fellow empath. I hope this has helped you in some way, as you walk your journey. If you ever get lost, feeling drowned by the near infinite possibility? Go down and in.

    Your body knows.

    Ewan Townhead

    , , , ,

  • For the last three Christmases, my family and I have played a wonderful board game called Pandemic Legacy. The “standard” game pits the players—who constitute a collaborative team, rather than opponents—against a lethal virus which is threatening the world with extinction. The objective of the game is to keep the virus from spreading, and find a cure.

    The “legacy” editions of the game are some of the greatest board games ever made. Each time you play the game, a larger meta narrative develops. The entire game is played across 20 or so individual games, each evolving the story, and changing the game. New characters are discovered, rules change, viruses mutate, clues are discovered, conditions get harder. It’s amazing fun.

    It’s a wonderful metaphor for the game of work in this modern age of complexity and unprecedented change.

    And so as I sat on New Year’s Eve outside my house beside the fire, working on my goals for 2020, I realised that I had started to think of my goals, like Pandemic Legacy—as a game that changes as it is played.

    The objective of the game

    The objective of the game of work is to unfold your soul—unwind its potential— into actuality. To create a life forged from the blueprints held deep inside. To become who you were born to be, and contribute what you were designed to create.

    There is no obvious end point to this objective. It cannot be clearly achieved. It is not a measurable goal. It is what James Carse calls an “infinite game”.

    Most of the games we play in life are the opposite—finite games. The goal of these games is to win at the expense of others. Make more money than your neighbour. Get more twitter followers than Stormzy. Commune with more unicorns than other shamans. They are zero-sum. The game is over when you’ve accumulated enough of the limited elements to beat your opponents.

    The most important games are infinite games. The objective of an infinite game is to keep playing the game.

    This is the game of soul-unfolding. You keep playing. It has no ultimate destination. There’s always another layer, another lifetime.

    This is the context for goals. The game objective is soul-unfoldment and embodiment. The game goals are what keeps you moving along the soul path.

    Setting soul goals

    As I sat with my notebook beside the fire, I thought afresh about goals, and what this new year, indeed this new decade, held in store.

    Goals and I used to have a rather fractured relationship. I thought they were constraining prisons that blocked creative emergence. They thought I was a lazy schmuck who was too scared to put my balls on the line.

    We respect each other now. We work together. And as I sat writing beside the fire I once more enquired into their nature.

    A goal is a conceptual stake that you plant in the ground of the future, and aim your life at. It’s something that—as far as you can tell—moves you along the soul path.

    Some people like setting modest goals, targets they’re confident they can hit. The goal of the goal is to achieve it—they fail if they don’t.

    Some people like setting impossible goals, something that looks utterly unattainable. The goal of the goal is to blast apart their conceptions of what is possible. They fail if they attain it (and discover they aimed too low).

    My neurotic insecurity doesn’t do well with impossible goals. I’m still building the muscle of discipline and conscientious work. So I create goals which are attainable. But (and this is the key) in order to attain them I have to change.

    This is a soul-goal.

    The goals constellate into a whole which—if achieved—will be completed by a man more soul embodied than this man now, writing these words.

    Ewan(2019) isn’t capable of pulling them off. I have to become Ewan(2020) to do so.

    And I check—carefully—that Ewan(2020) is someone that is soul-embodied, not ego-inflated. Let me explain this. It’s also key.

    The place from which we source goals determines the path the goals will then lead us down.

    If I create goals that pump my self-esteem and help me feel superior, then the man at the end of that path will be narcissistic. If I set goals that protect my insecurity and maintain safety, then the man at the end of that path will be a coward.

    If I set goals that further the work I know I’m here to do, which put me face to face with that which scares me existentially, which force me to embody those capacities that call out to be integrated, then the man at the end of that path will be more soul-manifest.

    The rules change as you proceed

    The nature of a soul-goal is that it requires transformation. The current self is insufficient to accomplish it. The muscle of the future self must be exercised in order to attain it. The very act of setting the goal, and perusing it launches you along the path toward greater soul manifestation.

    And then? You dynamically steer as you move through the actual territory of life. Reality never measures up to our concept of it before the fact. This is very important. It allows for the possibility that you realise that the goal you set wasn’t in the right place.

    We can set goals with the best of intention—the deepest conscious presence—and then reality can change the game on us half way through.

    This is fact confused me for a long time. I can never know exactly how the reality of the future will play out. Indeed, the deeper the transformation—the more I walk the path of the soul—the less sure I can be of where I can end up.

    A cynic (and I flirted with this for many years) may therefore conclude that goals are both pointless (due to the unpredictable nature of emergent reality) and harmful (for they constrain the “pure” emergence through our mental conceptions of where we “should” be.)

    This issue took me a long time to untangle.

    I remember sitting in a car with a man I was staying with in Dallas some years ago. He was a very successful business man and was grilling me on my business goals.

    I mumbled my way through lofty aspirations that I hoped would satiate his challenge, while actually revealing the fact I didn’t have any clear goals.

    “Well that doesn’t work, you need to have goals.” He replied.

    “But I can’t know what the future holds, what if things change?” I argued back.

    “It’s very simple.” He said. “You plant a stake a ground and you go at it—hard. And if you discover it wasn’t in the right place, you move the stake, and then you go at it—hard.”

    While we indeed cannot expect our conceptions of emergent future to be accurate, the coin has a second face.

    It is the great human gift to be able to manipulate time—to conceive of the future, and sacrifice the present in service of creating that future. This is what separated our hunter-gather ancestor, who lived in the blissful ignorance of the present, to our famer ancestor, who planted his seeds, and suffered in the present for a better future when the crop would be harvested.

    Our predictions of the future may be insufficient, but it is our job to make them nonetheless, and in doing so, discover that we can indeed create the future. And while it may not be what we always expect, if we are able to stay in touch with the soul’s guidance inside—the voices that call out and activate our deep yearning—the path is one that transforms us into something greater.

    The goal is not the point. It is not the win-condition of the game.

    The win-condition is to keep playing, learning, and unfolding the soul.

    This is the infinite game.

    But the goal is what drives you along the path. The goal is how you continually play the infinite game.

    Ewan Townhead

    , ,

  • The goal for many of us now is not what is used to be. It is not simply the attainment of a respectable job. It is not simply a good stable marriage and two kids.

    The goal is now—for a growing community of us— to self-actualize.

    The imperative is nothing short of soul-realisation, that slow and onerous path that leads through all of the things we least want to look at, toward that which we yearn so deeply for. To become who we really are.

    It is relinquishing the mistaken notion of who we should be, and instead devoting ourselves to the authenticity project.

    It is the descent into our original nature—the embodying of our natural heritage. And the accent into our highest self—who we are called to become.

    This is the path that lies before you and I.

    And it is one, whose course I believe we must now follow. This is the responsibility of our privilege—the hero’s journey of our time.

    And yet by nature of seeing this soul-path, and opening up the potential to walk its course, we simultaneously open the way along another path.

    The shadow of privilege

    Every omega has its delta. Every genius has its shadow. Every quest has its challenge. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

    In each way that we make possible a great good, we create the potential for a great ill. At the moment the ship was invented, so was the shipwreck.

    As the height of opportunity reaches high into the heavens of our new world, so the slide down into hell lengthens to balance the polarity.

    We have never been so free to discover the divinity of life, so protected and provided for, so encouraged and enabled. As the straps of conformity have frayed and rotted, we have been released to rise into the heights of self-realization.

    But these rotten straps of conformity were holding us back from more than self-realization. They were holding us back from the fall down into the pits of nihilistic insignificance. That horrible affliction where we do not matter and have no place.

    For the natural opposite of soul-driven self-realisation is a dark reality indeed—the absence of intrinsic meaning, the arbitrary nature of existence. The pointlessness of Being.

    This is the monster at the bottom of every dark mood. The spectre of the possibility that we are in fact insignificant. That it doesn’t matter, that whatever we do, it doesn’t matter. Because there’s no deeper origin, no higher destination.

    It is the germ of darkness that infects us when we turn away from what we know is most important, and fall into the self-doubt that we must supress with doughnuts or Netflix.

    The famous story goes that the world is resting on the back of a turtle, which in turn is resting on the back of a great turtle, ad infinitum. It’s turtles all the way down.

    The story of nihilism is that the world is resting on nothing. Randomness. Arbitrary form based on random context. There is no pattern to things. No great story that we are the protagonist within.

    We are simply the clever ape, who made up a world of language and clever objects to distract us from the horrendous truth that we are an accident of random mutations.

    There is no deeper truth. There is no deeper code.

    And what else can we do in the face of such a story but fall into the depths of apathy? For what is the point of doing anything, when there is no point to anything? What is the point of striving harder for the attainment of this year’s goals, when there is no actual goal to life?

    This is the world when the deeper code and the higher nature are stripped from it. When God and Soul are cleaved from the body of the world, and we are left in the empty expanse of empty cups and Instagram likes.

    The temptation of ignorance

    I’ve long thought about the scene in the Matrix where Cipher betrays Neo because he just doesn’t want to be in the real world any longer. He says “plug me back in to the matrix—take me back”. In other words he’d rather have ignorant contentment, than cold hard reality.

    I can relate.

    Especially in those inevitable moments when expectation presses down on me, I get into unhelpful habits, and things just don’t seem to go my way.

    “Why does this feel so hard? Why do I feel so unsafe?”

    Because the path of self-realization is hard. Is isn’t safe. That’s why we don’t happily choose it, and why so few embody its truths.

    The darkness of nihilism is the opposite of soul-realization. And so by choosing the path of soul-realization, you make the experience of nihilism a reality you must face.

    Nihilism is enacted when you turn away from the truth—from the brightness of your divine nature, and the illumination of your shadow.

    The soul path is choosing the light, including the light in the dark—the sovereign facing of the contents of the dark road.

    Walking the path of soul means facing the dark voluntarily­, and viscerally. For it is in the darkness that you find the treasure that can be offered in the light of the world, and of the marketplace.

    There are two paths

    The sin of nihilism is insidious. It’s right there in your pocket. The never-ending newsfeed. The next click. Then the next. Just one more. OK, one more.

    Until there is no one clicking. There is no awareness. The hard-won consciousness of your twenty first century self has been subsumed in the great collective mirage of ego.

    We are pulled out of this moment—deep time—into the superficiality of the headline, the promise that maybe this time, the click will fill that existential hole.

    This is the sin of superficiality and wilful blindness. Of putting our hands over our ears and pretending we don’t hear the deeper voices. Of numbing our bodies so that we don’t have to feel the pain of something out of alignment.

    It’s the price we pay for having freed ourselves so radically from the material necessities of survival, and opened up the path toward self-realization.

    Let us join hands

    Liberation is not found inside the cheesecake that smothers the feeling of tension. It is not uncovered through the espousal of social ideology or maintaining a glossy Instagram feed.

    It is found in the opposite direction—in becoming quiet enough to hear what is beneath the static of social media. It is in feeling ourselves, perhaps for the first time, and in encountering the urgency that each of us feel.

    The path is right there before us.

    It takes discipline to step out onto it each day. An inch is enough.

    It takes faith to keep stepping out, even though the destination is unclear.

    It takes courage to face the obstacles—the very things we have spent eons avoiding, and which trigger our deepest vulnerabilities.

    But this is what it takes.

    This is what separates those who will help build the new world, from those who will exacerbate the darkness out of which it will emerge.

    But the terrain is poorly mapped. The path unclear upon the ground of the new world.

    Perhaps if we were to join hands, and show each other the way, we might discover the promised land which we cannot help but yearn for.

    Ewan Townhead

    ,

  • “Follow your passion, and you’ll discover your purpose.” They say.

    Once you discover it, you can live the dream!

    I first read about the idea of “life purpose” in David Deida’s Way of the Superior Man. An incredible book that showed me, rather uncompromisingly, just how un-superior I actually was at the age of 24.

    Since then, the concept of ‘purpose’ has spread far and wide. You can read about it in a thousand blog posts. I’ve written about it.

    The idea goes something like this…

    You have a life purpose. And you’ve either discovered it (in which case you just execute it and live out the dream) or you haven’t (in which case, keep reading those ‘seven steps to discovering your purpose’ blogs until you do).

    It’s as if purpose is a thing, an object, which can therefore be lost or found, like a magic key.

    I don’t find this characterization helpful, so I want to try a different tack.

    Let’s go back to basics.

    Purpose means aim

    Purpose at its root simply means aim. Like you aim an arrow at a target. Or a horse at a gap in a hedge.

    You can aim at anything, it’s a universal human capacity. You point yourself at something, and then you have aim (purpose).

    You look at the hill over yonder, and decide you’d like to climb it. You turn your body until it’s pointed at the top of the hill. Now you’re aimed at it. And now you have a purpose: to climb the hill.

    We can have more sophisticated aims. But the mechanics are the same each time.

    1. You picture an objective you want to reach.
    2. You orient yourself toward that objective.

    Most of our objectives aren’t physical locations any longer. They’re not hill tops or distant lands beyond the horizon, they’re abstract ideas.

    “Write a book.”

    “Attract 1,000 more people to my mailing list.”

    “Master multiple orgasms.”

    You can’t literally see these objectives. They’re not physical locations you can look at. They are conceptual locations that you see in your mind’s eye – the ‘place’ in the future when you have what you imagined. If you close your eyes, you’ll find you can picture it quite distinctly.

    And once you can see your objective, then you can point your life at it.

    It’s all pointless

    What we often mean when we say “I need to discover my purpose” is that we don’t know what our life is aiming at.

    To be without purpose is to be aimless – you don’t know what your objective is – meandering through repetitive days, with no end in sight.

    This (understandably) leads to nihilism – feelings of existential pointlessness.

    “What am I trying for anyway? Life has no point. Might as well eat another tub of ice-cream, or load up Pornhub.”

    If you have no aim, then by definition, it is pointless. There’s no point – no sharp end – that indicates which direction you’re heading in.

    We’re designed to aim ourselves toward something. It’s why we have a front and a back. The front points forward, toward what we’re aimed at.

    If you feel aimless, then it’s probably because you’re not aimed at anything. This could be true in an immediate sense (I’ve got 3 hours before my meeting, and I don’t know what to do) or in an existential sense (oh god! What am I doing with my life!?).

    The solution either way is to define your objective, and aim yourself at it.

    Writing it down is often best. Make it tight.

    “Write 3 pages on the nature of nihilism.”

    “Start a new career as an orgasm coach – have my first client in no more than 2 months.”

    Aiming yourself at something is what gives you purpose.

    Visualising your objective

    I recently had the distinct pleasure of attending a workshop with Jordan Peterson (if you don’t know who that is – wake up). In fact, several of the ideas he presented during the day have been woven into this piece, but there’s one that really stuck with me.

    When we say we have a “vision for the future” or we want to “visualise our objective”, that’s not poetic licence, that’s how it actually works – technically.

    If you hold up your finger in front of your face, and look directly at it, you’ll be able to see it in great detail. It is “high definition”. You can see wrinkles, hairs, subtle textures.

    But if you keep your eyes on that same point in space, and gradually move your finger to the side, its definition will decrease, until at the periphery of your vision, you can’t see it at all (unless it moves).

    This is how our physical vision functions. This is also how our conceptual vision functions.

    When you focus on something, everything that is not that something gets blurry. The more detail it has, the blurrier everything else becomes.

    The lesson? Focus on your objective. “See” it with as much detail as possible.

    Since it’s not a physical objective you can literally stare at, you’re going to need to use your imagination, and the power of language.

    Picture it. Describe it. Write it down.

    The more significant the objective, the more detail (words) you’ll need.

    A small objective needs a tight sentence.

    A ten-year vision requires pages and pages.

    Both give you purpose.

    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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  • There are those moments that happen, periods in our lives, when we reach a fork in the road.

    The wheel of life has revolved, and we’re faced with a choice. A momentous choice perhaps. We feel it, like a beckoning from the future, or an intolerance for the present.

    Something wants to change.

    “I don’t want to change. I like things how they are. It’s safe here, familiar.” The voice inside me says.

    The resistance spins its insidious web, telling me how dangerous it is to change. The ego clings to its notion of itself.

    “Maybe this is a distraction, and not really what I want.” the resistance whispers in my own voice.

    But I can tell it’s signifiant. It’s palpable somehow. I just know, I feel it.

    I’ve reached a turning point.

    *

    There are two choices.

    We can choose the change that presents itself, follow the new course, and discover the undiscovered.

    Or we choose normality and keep plodding along the highway of what we already know. The wheel of change keeps on turning, and the choice point is passed over.

    And in one sense, it doesn’t matter what we choose. Because even if we plump for normality, the wheel keeps on turning. And sooner or later it comes full circle and the choice point is presented anew.

    Except this time, the urgency has been increased. The volume level higher. The insistence harder to ignore, the status quo harder to rationalize.

    It will keep turning, returning to this point, until we choose what we’re asked to.

    So in the longest sense of the game, we can’t go wrong.

    But the price is time.

    *

    I feel it. The turning point returned. I’ve been here before. Everything slows down. The buzz of my refrigerator hums louder, as the air in the room grows sharp.

    Life is asking me to level up, to embrace my power, to choose to show myself, to fulfil what I’m capable of. The fork in the road is right there before me.

    “Will you take it this time?”

    “Do I have to?” I whine. “It’s hard, I don’t think I can.”

    No, I don’t have to. And nor do you. We can plough on, doing what we’ve always done. It will come around again. It has before. It will again.

    But do you want to keep praying the price? The price of wasted moments?

    *

    Will you turn toward your higher self, and walk his or her path?

    It’s not some moral standard you must adhere to. There’s no judgemental God or parent who will castigate you if you flunk out.

    It’s up to you.

    Do you want it?

    Or would you rather turn back toward the safety of the couch, or a cigarette. The familiarity of a comfortable existence. Doing the work you’ve already been doing, because you’re good at it. It’s fine how it is.

    The turning point is yours. It’s not something you have to take. You can sit back and wait until the wheel has spun so many times, that the tension is unbearable, and you can’t feel a choice, except to leap. That’s life’s way of ensuring you take the true path eventually.

    You can do that if you want. I can too. I’ve done it plenty of times.

    Or, you can slow down. Right now. And take a breath, deep in the centre of your belly.

    It’s you that lies down that scarier path. Your truer nature embodied and lived a little more, with every small step you take.

    I don’t want to hurry you. But life is waiting for you down there. How long it will take for the wheel to turn around to this point once more? Do you want to wait and see?

    Or do you want to take that first shuffling step, down the road untraveled?

     

    Ewan Townhead

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  • I started asking myself this question just over a year ago.

    Last autumn I went through one of the toughest periods of my life.

    After returning from 7 months of traveling in June of 2013, things were on the up. I was full of audacious ideas, a new business partnership, renewed juju.

    And then it all started to crash.

    The woman I’d met in Bali, and for whom I’d returned from America to be with, was not happy with how I was being. Our relationship was really struggling. I was really struggling.

    While I was finding success in the work I was doing – the entrepreneurs academy I’d co-founded was doing really well – I was not happy.

    The new business partnership I’d started in San Francisco had petered out before it really got going. I knew I wasn’t doing what I actually wanted to do, but I couldn’t think of what that was. And I needed money.

    So, when my relationship hit crisis point, and I realized I didn’t have anywhere to retreat to (I’d been crashing with my woman in her room – big mistake), I had to take drastic action.

    I called my mum in tears.

    “Mum, things have got really bad here, and I don’t have anywhere else to go. can I come and stay with you for a little bit?”

    That ‘little bit’ ended up being 4 months, split between my parents houses (they’re separated). here I was, at 31, living back with my parents, my relationship on the rocks, my business ideals in tatters. My ego was crushed.

    My bright mind couldn’t get me out of the twisting maze.

    1. I’m not doing the work I’m supposed to.
    2. I don’t know what that is, or how to get paid from it.
    3. But I need money to get a house, and get myself grounded again.
    4. But I can’t do work that my heart isn’t in anymore.
    5. Repeat.

    I kept trying to strategize it – come up with the smart plan that would get me what I wanted, without stress, and without betraying my heart.

    But it just kept looping, around and around.

    So I turned to God.

    I don’t know why. It just seemed like the right thing to do. Even though I didn’t really know what that meant. And I still carried a bunch of Christian allergies. But I went in.

    I started reading Christian mysticism, and meditating and praying profusely.

    And somewhere in the tumult of swirling experiences, the question was given to me.

    What is being asked of me?

    It’s a question I’ve asked myself countless times since then. And one I’ve asked my clients, and friends too.

    I like it as a question. Deeply.

    It’s powerful. Fucking powerful. And yet, it doesn’t assume anything, except that something is possible. And that that possibility is greater than I am.

    It pulls at my edges. It pulls at what I consider possible. It pulls at the edges of my individuality, connecting me to a greater whole. A greater plan. A greater play.

    And so, as I sit back and reflect on this year, it is this question that has pulled and called me forth into things I could not have manifested alone.

    It’s the question I ask when things get confusing. It’s the question I ask when I’m freezing up in fear. It’s the question I ask when I want to connect with something infinitely wider than my mind.

    I could list so many things that this question has opened up for me.

    Here are 5 big ones.

    1. Quitting the Business Academy I Co-founded

    It wasn’t simply the academy that I stepped away from, but the business partnership I’d had for two and a half years.

    It was a huge decision.

    I didn’t know where money would come from afterwards. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do instead. I didn’t know whether I was being sensible or idiotic.

    But it was what was asked of me.

    I could feel the truth of it. And I could hear the truth of it from the mouths of loved ones around me.

    All the while my rational mind was going loopy. It couldn’t make sense of it. And my anxiety was spinning itself up, telling me what I was doing was ‘not safe’.

    I kept checking in. Is this what is being asked of me?

    “Yes.”

    It was the hardest decision I made this year. It was the best decision I made this year. It’s changed my life.

    2. Reaching out to a Mentor

    For about 3 months, I kept having intuitions about it.

    A voice kept saying: “Reach out to him, ask him to be your mentor.”

    I couldn’t make sense of it. He’s an incredibly busy guy. A leader of a big and successful business. I don’t even know him that well.

    So I’d let it go. And forget about it. And a few weeks later, it would pop up again.

    “Reach out to him. Ask him to be your mentor.”

    This is what’s being asked of me? To reach out?

    “Yes.”

    So I did. And he said yes.

    We meet every month. It’s incredibly powerful. I feel so blessed. Being with him and receiving his help has had profound effects on me and my business.

    3. Signing my First Long-term Coaching Clients

    They wanted to work with me.

    I’d coached them through the academy I’d just stepped out of. I’d gone way beyond the coaching they’d paid for, because I just loved them and their business.

    I’d coached people on and off for several years, but I’d never signed my own private clients to a long-term package deal before. I’d always done it on a session by session basis. But this needed something way bigger than that.

    I wrote them a proposal. It took me two days. The package and price I quoted them scared the shit out of me. It was big.

    Is this what I’m asked to do? Is this what I’m asked to quote them?

    “Yes.”

    Fuck.

    I sent it to them, and felt all the tension drip off me.

    I’d spoken my pure truth. I wasn’t anxious about what they would say. I’d spoken my heart. There was nothing more I could do.

    And then they said yes.

    And then I called them and checked their commitment level. I could feel some hesitancy in them, and I wanted it to be a full yes.

    They said that had them trust me even more.

    We did some fabulous work together. We learned a huge amount. They’re now some of my favorite people on the planet.

    4. Hiring a Coach I Couldn’t Afford

    I’d known for some time that I wanted to invest in a coach of my own. I knew it was time for me.

    I’d spoken to Steve Chandler, one of the biggest coaches around. He was an option. But it didn’t feel right. I half-approached another couple of people I knew, and sounded them out. But none of it felt right.

    Then my friend Lisa had an intuition I should reach out to Sam, a coach and good friend of hers. Which I did.

    We ended up talking for two and a half hours. It felt so right to be coached by him. And the price he quoted me scared the shit out of me.

    I slept on it, and went for a walk in the park early the next morning. I tuned in.

    Am I asked to sign up for this?

    “Yes.” Fuck. But I’m scared. I can’t afford this.

    I’m really asked to do this?

    “Yes.”

    So I biked over to a cafe, and sent him the money.

    The coaching with Sam has taken my business to another level. And it’s taken me to another level of myself.

    5. Publishing Things I Didn’t Want to Publish

    It must have been just before I finally launched this site (it took me over 7 months from sketch to launch, seriously). I was meditating, and could feel that there was something wanting to come through.

    I tuned in deeply, and cast my closed eyes upward. There were two guys sitting there in big stone chairs. One was old, un-attached, immovable. One was younger, fiery, charming. I trusted them completely, immediately.

    What’s being asked of me?

    The answer was instant.

    “Ewan. You must speak. You must speak.”

    I knew it was true. Truer than ideas or concepts. Truth in its rawest form.

    So I vowed to speak. To speak the things I felt in my heart, but was deeply resisting to utter with my lips.

    I published the blogs here on this site. And each and every time I could feel the counter-force fighting me. I’d squirm as I hit ‘share’ on facebook.

    But I trusted it. I knew it was what was being asked of me.

    What is being asked of you?

    It’s the most powerful question I know.

    It’s one you can’t get wrong. You can’t get it right either.

    But you can ask it. Deliberately. Resolutely. Faithfully. And you can feel the truth of what is asked in return. And you can make a choice. To listen.

    What is being asked of you?

    Really. Be with it. Now.

    What is being asked of you?

    It’s not a homework assignment. It’s the call of your being.

    What is being asked of you?

    It’s already there. The question is already in you. You just need to reach out and listen.

    What is being asked of you?

    Write it down. Breathe it in. Offer it up.

    Ewan Townhead

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