Barely 40 and very well paid, Tom Morgan was sitting on a Manhattan trading floor when his whole being became bathed in love. Then a voice started in his head, and it didn't stop for two years.

Sound Bites

  • "I had what I can only describe as a spiritual awakening or psychotic break depending on your biases."
  • "I had this objectively incredibly desirable life. And I was looking around being like, shit, is this all there is?"
  • "Like you're making so much money, you have no transferable skills, just hold on."
  • "Toothpaste comes out of the tube and you can't put it back in again."
  • "We have these 67 year old adolescents running the world who behave like adolescents."
  • "God whispers in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience and shouts in our pains."
  • "Don't employ a psychotically depressed life coach, just a piece of advice."
  • "Give me your life and I will give you that salary."
  • "If I had had hope, the dark night wouldn't have been dark."
  • "Your choice isn't no death. Your choice is risking death through the adventure."


Description

Tom Morgan jumped through every academic hoop, got fired as a football agent, then lucked his way into the City and on to New York. At barely 40 he had the salary, the Manhattan life and the commitments, and a desk in an office where, he says, everyone was pretending to work. Then he started asking whether this was all there is.

Today he runs The Leading Edge, a community for people hearing the same call. He talks about why it so often arrives around 36, what happened after the awakening, and why Wall Street never talks about it.

What We Explore

  • Rich, successful and asking "is this all there is?", and why it so often arrives around 36
  • A spiritual awakening on a trading floor, and the two years of hell that came after it
  • The terracotta army: men told there's no second act, and what it takes to leave the Shire


Mentioned in This Episode

  • Bill Plotkin — his soul initiations in the wild, and his claim that this crisis is an established time of life
  • Iain McGilchrist's hemisphere theory — it lit Tom up during lockdown, and it is his first theory of the voice
  • C.S. Lewis — "God whispers in our pleasures…", the line Tom reaches for when the body forces the change
  • The Gospel of Thomas — what you bring forth saves you; what you don't destroys you
  • Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth — "spiritual nitroglycerin", and the patient zero of Tom's whole journey
  • Carl Jung — "there's no greater burden a child can bear than the unlived life of the parent"
  • Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari — Tom loved it at the time, and now thinks it is catastrophically wrong
  • The Matrix — for Tom, the best telling of the hero's journey
  • Oldboy — the film he reaches for to describe the first night he felt his son's love
  • Spring 1 from Max Richter's Recomposed — on the beach at Montauk, when he began to feel his boy
  • Moloch — the force Tom felt sitting underneath Wall Street
  • Tim Freke — our guest on episode 4, who told Tom that not everyone makes it out
  • The Leading Edge — Tom's community of 150, and the network of networks he is building


Connect with Tom

The Leading Edge on Substack: https://newsletter.theleading-edge.org/

X: https://x.com/tomowenmorgan

Tom says he is less active on X than he used to be. Substack is where he writes.

A little about Hamish Niven

For 25 years, I lived a life that looked successful from the outside. Inside it was falling apart, and I was throwing fuel on the fire — addiction, alcohol. I was on a steep path to self-destruct.

November 2018. I chose life, and had to change everything.

I built The 13th Room because nothing like that existed when I needed it.

The Brave Man Project — this podcast. It is about men, but not just for men. Men who broke under the weight of their own performance. Men who rebuilt and climbed so much higher.

The 13th Room is a space for the successful man who needs to change and knows it. 13 sessions, you and me. No fixing. Pure witnessing. Starts with a free 20-minute conversation.

Podcast website: https://thebravemanproject.com

Hamish's website: https://hamishniven.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBraveManProject

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamishniven/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hamish.niven

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hamishniven/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hamishniven

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