Month: May 2014

Healing Art: Day 4 – The Gift Of Despair

Published on by Gabriel HeartmanLeave a comment

By Christopher Tydeman

Drawing By Christopher Tydeman
Drawing By Christopher Tydeman

This picture was done during a time where a feeling of great despair had bubbled up within me.  I did not journal with it at the time and to do so now would be inauthentic and contrived.  However, I did feel a desire to share my process around the theme of this drawing.  Maybe as I write a voice may choose to be heard and felt if it felt safe enough to do so.  

There was an overall feeling of hopelessness that overcame me.  Like a black cloud that covers the sun that seems to go on forever.  I began this picture with the cloudy background to capture that feeling.  Next, came the road, or path, that I had found myself on.  “A road to God-knows- where in a hurry,” a part of me felt it was on.  Then, an intuition to make dark columns from the horizon up toward the heavens.  Foreboding monoliths towering over to suggest that there was no hope of salvation.   Lastly, I could feel my desire and passion being guarded, protected, quarantined,  or off limits.  A part of me felt it could not have what it truly wanted.   Enter despair.

This picture represents several parts of me all at once.  My inner sensitive, full passion, love, and sense of beauty.  My inner critic, with its perpetual barrage of criticisms, judgements, and punishments to keep my inner sensitive in a state of oppressive depression.  Then my inner muse.  My vision and creative energy.  My connection to the divine within and without.  A holy trinity, if you will.

The separation of a sensitive from its muse is part of a journey to remember what we, as artists, have always known ourselves to be.  Messengers, prophets, divine creators.  That comes with great reward as well as great pain.  To be open to such inspiration, one must be sensitive enough to receive it.  But that leaves the door open to much toxic energy and conditioning.  Through the course of one’s life, and even lives, these external influences can become internalized.  The inner critic is born.  But this part of us can be viewed as a “negative” to be combated and banished.  The emotional reality is that this part of us was developed to protect us from the pain our inner sensitive was too sensitive to digest.  By keeping constant surveillance on us, the inner critic is trying to keep us from being heart broken once again, even while it is breaking our own spirit in the process.

Before SoulFullHeart, my inner critic was a harsh self-punisher.  The bigger the desire, the harsher the punisher it seems.  But as I began to heal my punisher, it has softened to a critical voice.  Admittedly, I still feel some punishment but not as acute as in my past.  I am feeling my inner critic as my guide and keen protector of my inner sensitive.  Its voice is of my fathers, both biological and step.  They were just trying to do what they felt was best from their own experiences and conditioning to help me become successful and happy.  I am grateful for that, but it no longer serves me.  I am to be a father figure to my own inner sensitive.  To field the harsh criticisms and digest them between me and my inner critic, leaving my sensitive to be what it is meant to be…a receiver of divine beauty.

In this drawing, you will notice that there is space in between the bars.  There is opportunity.  There is a way in and through.  I will take the figure on the road by the hand and walk with him.  I will love the bars for what they truly are and in time they will come down to reveal my heart, my muse, and my gift to the world.

Over the next few weeks, Christopher Tydeman will be vulnerably sharing works of art that he has created that reflect his inner world. In SoulFullHeart, our inner world is comprised of a tapestry of emotionality, which is held by what we call a “part” of us. These parts live in different emotional terrain, such as hurt, anxiety, control, depression, rage, and shame. When we courageously venture inward, we feel this terrain with our parts to feel and heal woundings that have been been stuck for many years, many lifetimes. Christopher says about this series, ‘”As a creative soul, I desire to help my parts heal through images, words, and music. I also desire to serve others with the same passion of healing and creativity. I do not have a plan other than to be as transparent as I can and see where the road takes me.”  Check out his previous blog entries, An Artist, His Muse, and His Inner Critic, and Healing Art to Heal Your Heart to find out more about this series. Christopher Tydeman has been embracing the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life since August, 2010. He is a SoulFullHeart facilitator-in-training, author on this blog, and he hosted the SoulFullHeart Experience Radio Show. For more information about the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life, visit soulfullheart.com.

Become Who You Were Meant To Be: Intro To SoulFullHeart Talk Part 2 – SoulFullHeart Video Series

Published on by Jelelle AwenLeave a comment

 

sfhtalks

Today’s video, is part two of a talk hosted by Wayne and Jillian Vriend, Co-creators of SoulFullHeart, introducing the SoulFullHeart Way of Life. Topics covered include: Young adults and teenagers doing parts work versus older adults; limitless healing offered by SoulFullHeart process versus emphasizing an enlightenment achievement; how SoulFullHeart is not a therapy and not about fixing or solving; why we form fit to our environments; Wayne and Jillian’s backgrounds and history as spiritual seekers and teachers; punisher and shame parts relationship; SoulFullHeart energy healing and how it differs from other energy healing modalities; how SoulFullHeart offers intimacy with self, others, and the Divine; how SoulFullHeart feels past lives and empowers the person to remember them for themselves in an emotionally grounded way; how SoulFullHeart meets people where they are; and an introduction the seven key areas of life. Go here to watch part one of this talk.

In this SoulFullHeart Vlog (videoblog) series, co-creators of SoulFullHeart Wayne and Jillian Vriend share a talk series that they are hosting in their local area, sunshine coast, BC, Canada. The talk series features four different topics offered every other Tuesday evening. Videos of these talks are posted on this blog, on the SoulFullHeart website, and on the SoulFullHeart Experience Youtube Channel. Visit soulfullheart.com for more information about the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life.

 

Healing Art: Day 3 – Hope in the Face of Hopelessness

Published on by Gabriel Heartman

By Sequoia Heartman

Hope

Today I am going to be journaling with the artwork itself.  I am choosing not to connect to a particular part of me, as there is a level of protection that my parts need.  Instead, I will use the word “pArt” as a way to differentiate me from the picture.  What I will be doing is demonstrating how you may be able to begin to connect with the energy of your art piece.  What comes back to you is a part of who you are that needs to express and be felt.  Before sharing, asking permission is always necessary so this part of you can feel they trust you.

Sequoia:  Hello, pArt.  I was wondering if you would be open to speaking with me?

Drawing:  Yes.  I would like that.

S:  Thank you.  Before we begin, I wanted to see how you feel about sharing this on the blog.

P:  I guess I will have to see how I feel after we talk.

S:  Okay.  Fair enough.  What would you like to tell me?

P:  When I made this, I didn’t really know what I was going to make.  I was feeling a swirling in my head and just started to make a circular stroke.  This turned into a deep dark cave.  That is another feeling I was having.  

S:  Can you tell me about the swirling feeling?

P:  I was feeling overwhelmed with feelings of despair and desire.  Desiring to feel light and alive, yet being overcome by futility and stuckness.  I could only sit and hope for relief.  

S:  Did drawing this help?

P:  Yeah.  It did.  But in the past it always comes back.

S:  This is why we need to feel the root of this so we can heal it together.  

P:  I would like that.  I feel imprisoned by a force stronger than myself.  I don’t have any chains on, but still feel immovable.  It’s like sludge.  I don’t like it when this happens.

S:  I don’t blame you.  I would like to feel you separate from the grey sludge.  It feels like you soak it up like a sponge because you haven’t known any better.  Do you feel responsible for this feeling?

P:  I don’t know.  Feels like I have been used to taking in all sorts of energy and making it a part of me.  

S:  Do you have any idea why?

P:  Hmmm.  Not sure in the moment.  I have always felt an ability to feel other people’s pain.  I am sensitive to it.  As a kid, I held all sort of energy from my parents.  For some reason, I felt responsible to do so.

S:  Maybe you were made to feel responsible.  This can happen easily as a porous being.  Your parents couldn’t hold it themselves and somewhere recognized that you could.  

P:  Hmmm.  That sounds strange, but sadly true.  

S:  There can be other things at play here too, such as past life experiences, that have led to this feeling of being responsible for taking in toxicity.

P:  Wow.  So this energy that surrounds me in this picture is not mine, but I take it on.  What is wrong with me?

S:  There is nothing “wrong” with you.  You have done what you felt was needed to help others.  What you needed was someone to advocate for and protect you.  That is what I plan to do.

P:  That feeling is pretty intense, Sequoia.  

S:  I know.  I was there, even though just barely.  

P:  I know you were.  Or else I wouldn’t have been able to have the space to do this drawing.  Thank you.

S:  You are welcome.  I desire to hold this sludge energy and not you.  

P:  That would be heaven.  

S:  Is it okay to share this in the blog?

P:  Yeah.  I feel okay with that.  Maybe someone can get something from this who feels like I do.  

S:  That would be awesome.  Thank you for sharing.

P:  Thank you for talking to me.

The grey cave in this picture represents Despair/ Futility, hopelessness in the face of Hope.  It does not wish to be made public at this time.  It is the feeling that comes after intense inner criticism.  I feel this is a crucial place for me to go.  I am hoping that with some time, and trust from this part, I will be able to share any movements.  I can feel how this is a universal part of artists and how it can be used as a source of inspiration for their creativity.  Some of my best work has come from this feeling of despair.  But I do not want to live that way.  I wish to express it as it needs to be felt, but I don’t wish to suffer with it.  I desire my art to reflect more than my despair because I am more than that.  My inner sensitive needs a boundary from the heaviness of this energy.  That can only happen with an ongoing dialogue with my critic and despair.  

Over the next few weeks, Sequoia Heartman will be vulnerably sharing works of art that he has created that reflect his inner world. In SoulFullHeart, our inner world is comprised of a tapestry of emotionality, which is held by what we call a “part” of us. These parts live in different emotional terrain, such as hurt, anxiety, control, depression, rage, and shame. When we courageously venture inward, we feel this terrain with our parts to feel and heal woundings that have been been stuck for many years, many lifetimes. Sequoia says about this series, ‘”As a creative soul, I desire to help my parts heal through images, words, and music. I also desire to serve others with the same passion of healing and creativity. I do not have a plan other than to be as transparent as I can and see where the road takes me.”  Check out his previous blog entries, An Artist, His Muse, and His Inner Critic, and Healing Art to Heal Your Heart to find out more about this series. Sequoia Heartman is an apprentice facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. For more information about the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life, visit soulfullheartwayoflife.com.

Healing Art: Day 2 – Reign Of Criticism

Published on by Gabriel Heartman5 Comments

By Christopher Tydeman

Drawing By Christopher Tydeman
Drawing By Christopher Tydeman

The following dialogue is between me and my inner sensitive (Eli) around the images he drew above. In my blogyesterday I talked about the process of feeling how art can be a reflection of a part of us needing to be felt. Through facilitation, space between you and the part can be created. Through journaling, the part can be felt by you, the artist, and healing can begin. This is an ongoing dynamic and not a one shot deal.

Christopher: Hello, Eli. Would it be okay to talk about the drawings you made?

Eli: Sure. It’s okay.

C: Can you tell me what you were feeling when you made the one I shared in yesterday’s blog post?

E: It was a while ago, but I remember wanting to draw something, but I didn’t know what. I remember we talked about drawing the feeling of wanting to create but being blocked by a feeling of heaviness and a whirling sensation.

C: What is the heaviness?

E: It is a feeling of defeat and despair  that I can’t draw. I don’t know what to draw. Even if I had an idea I am not talented enough to make it look the way I want. It feels depressing when I really want to create. It is like a gray cloud that comes over me.

C: Hence the charcoal.

E: Yeah. Charcoal gives the feeling of despair and depression.

C: What was the whirling feeling?

E: Just this voice barraging me with all the reasons why I can’t create, whether it is around practical things or lack of ideas or skills. The swirl leads to the feeling of depression. Like I can’t do anything about it. I am defeated.

C: So this voice comes in and blows out your flame?

E: Yeah. Sort of like that. It dampens it for sure.

C: But it doesn’t go away completely.

E: No. I guess not. I still feel desire in me to create.

C: Of course you do, Eli. It is your essence to create. That can’t be denied when it is what makes you, you.

E: But the voice seems insurmountable. Like I am trying to push against a large building that won’t move. I feel hopeless and I just give up.

C: Is that the feeling in today’s picture?

E: Yeah. It is.

C: What is the rain about?

E: Just that feeling of being dampened.

C: I see cracks in the building and a light around the corner.

E: Yeah. I don’t know why they are there.

C: I think you do. What do they feel like to you?

E: Well, I feel like the building is getting old. It is ready to fall down.

C: Maybe the part of me that feels immovable may actually show some signs of vulnerability and movement.

E: Hmmm. Maybe.

C: What about the light?

E: Feels in the moment that it could be hope. Or maybe my desire that is always “just around the corner”. One in the same I guess.

C: I like the feeling of that.

E: Me too.

C: What is this drawing trying to tell you now?

E: Hmmm…maybe it is telling me that I don’t have to push against this big building anymore. That all I need to do is leave that to you and head toward the light of my passion and desire.

C: You can put an umbrella there, Eli, so as to not burn out your flame. I will be that for you.

E: I would like that a lot, Christopher. Thank you. I am tired of feeling this way.

C: I know you are, Eli. I can feel that. You need some protection from the reign of criticism. That is my job.

E: I believe you. Thank you for being there for me.

C: You are so welcome, Eli. Thank you for your beautiful heartwork.

E: Don’t you mean artwork?

C: Nope.

E: Ooooh! I get it. Very clever.

C: I thought so. : )

Over the next few weeks, Christopher Tydeman will be vulnerably sharing works of art that he has created that reflect his inner world. In SoulFullHeart, our inner world is comprised of a tapestry of emotionality, which is held by what we call a “part” of us. These parts live in different emotional terrain, such as hurt, anxiety, control, depression, rage, and shame. When we courageously venture inward, we feel this terrain with our parts to feel and heal woundings that have been been stuck for many years, many lifetimes. Christopher says about this series, ‘”As a creative soul, I desire to help my parts heal through images, words, and music. I also desire to serve others with the same passion of healing and creativity. I do not have a plan other than to be as transparent as I can and see where the road takes me.”  Check out his previous blog entries, An Artist, His Muse, and His Inner Critic, and Healing Art to Heal Your Heart to find out more about this series. Christopher Tydeman has been embracing the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life since August, 2010. He is a SoulFullHeart facilitator-in-training, author on this blog, and he hosted the SoulFullHeart Experience Radio Show. For more information about the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life, visit soulfullheart.com.

Embracing Being A Spiritual Student: Humility, Surrender, And Growth

Published on by Kasha Rosa2 Comments

student2

By Kathleen Calder

I was very spiritually-focused, seeking big answers and asking big questions as of age 14, and have been on this trajectory ever since. Yet being spiritually open does not entitle me to “skip a grade” in life. My desire at the moment is to keep allowing life to bring me what it needs to, in order to bring me to a place where I can offer what I’ve healed to others like me, so they can work to heal it in themselves.

There’s a vulnerability in humbling yourself to be a student. I don’t mean paying thousands of dollars for your education, exactly. I mean allowing yourself to be a student in life, not just in a classroom. Negotiating with the parts of you that feel entitled to skipping ahead to being a teacher feels essential. There are some people I have met who have parts that openly embrace being a student, yet this over-humility doesn’t feel quite right either. There is a way to be a student that allows yourself to be humbled and yet be in your power too. You don’t get to choose the lesson, but you get to choose how to take it in. You don’t always get to choose your teachers either, but you get to choose how to take them in and for how long.

I remember that almost my whole life, I’ve wanted to “skip a grade”. As a child in elementary school, I ached for the recognition of being really smart and basically superior in some ways to everyone else my age, that would come with skipping a grade. I wanted to prove that I needed the challenge. Feels like it was partly the social pain that part of me endured that brought this on. It could also have been the pain of being the “baby of the family”. I had a lot of worth to prove – to “everyone else”, but ultimately to me. I don’t remember ever feeling happy to be the age I was. Part of me always had their eye on being “in” with the older kids. This carried over into my teen years. Yet there were terms I couldn’t compromise on. There were things I just refused to do, like going to parties or drinking or doing drugs. I didn’t really get drunk until my late teens, didn’t try pot until university, and I didn’t really go to many parties until my second year of university. I also didn’t choose to become sexually active until I was 21.

Now I’m 26 years old, going to be 27 very soon (less than a month), and there are life experiences and rites of passage I still haven’t inhabited, like getting my driver’s licence. There are many reasons why this was delayed, but the symbolism of it feels worth exploring – I wasn’t ready to surrender to not knowing how to be in the “driver’s seat” in my own life, at my age, at my stage of spiritual, emotional, worldly knowledge and experience. I try to frame it for my parts, not so much as “immaturity” but as “arrested development”. This makes it feel less critical and easier to own. Makes it easier to admit that I need to be a student of life for a while, to essentially catch up to myself in a way.

Now I’m faced with the challenge of being in life as a 26 year old, trying to catch up on things like inhabiting a job in a much fuller way than I have before, being fully independent in providing for myself (including getting my licence and a car), etc. Gaps of life experience have brought the need to create some social distance from others engaged in the SoulFullHeart way of life. This has been a very hard reality to let in for parts of me. Right now in my process, I am working to let this humble me. It is crazy-making at times to feel how much ground I need to cover within myself and in life, and yet I can hold at the same time that my desire to serve others can only come to fruition if I can surrender to this and the coming life phases. I am working daily towards that deeper surrender by challenging myself to be in my power and spine, while also feeling my parts through all life changes and decisions. I need to keep reminding my parts that we are not entitled to be older than we are, in any other sacred life phase than we are right now.

I know and can feel that there are others around my age who have had a similar experience of themselves in this life. I was very spiritually-focused, seeking big answers and asking big questions as of age 14, and have been on this trajectory ever since. Yet being spiritually open does not entitle me to “skip a grade” in life. It also does not entitle me to the role of “teacher” when I have yet to fully embrace being a student. My desire at the moment is to keep allowing life to bring me what it needs to, in order to bring me to a place where I can offer what I’ve healed to others like me, so they can work to heal it in themselves. I feel that if those in my generation and younger can do this, we can really be the start of a new wave of human being that is much more authentically compassionate and embodied, not only for our sake but for the sake of our world as a whole.

Kathleen Calder has been embracing the SoulFullHeart Way of Life since January, 2012. Go here to read more of her writing and visit soulfullheart.com for more information about SoulFullHeart.

Healing Art: Day 1- Critical Chaos

Published on by Gabriel Heartman1 Comment
Drawing By Christopher Tydeman
Drawing By Christopher Tydeman

By Christopher Tydeman

Over the next few weeks, I will be vulnerably sharing works of art that I have created that reflect my inner world. In SoulFullHeart, our inner world is comprised of a tapestry of emotionality, which is held by what we call a “part” of us. These parts live in different emotional terrain, such as hurt, anxiety, control, depression, rage, and shame. When we courageously venture inward, we feel this terrain with our parts to feel and heal woundings that have been been stuck for many years, many lifetimes. As a creative soul, I desire to help my parts heal through images, words, and music. I also desire to serve others with the same passion of healing and creativity. I do not have a plan other than to be as transparent as I can and see where the road takes me.  Check out my previous blog entries, An Artist, His Muse, and His Inner Critic, and Healing Art to Heal Your Heart to find out more about this series.

We have all heard the term “inner critic”. The voice inside us that showers us with a litany of reasons why we can’t do this or that. Why we are not good enough, talented enough, skilled enough, or attractive enough to be or have the things in life that bring us joy and passion. It is the buzz kill, the saboteur, that knocks us off our cloud nine. This part of me has been with me a long time. As I have slowly become more conscious of him, I have experienced the voice at almost every minute of my day. It is enough to drive you mad if you let it…and I have come close. Even as I write this, I can feel something around me, watching me, checking to see if I am being clear, using proper grammar and spelling, or wondering if I am just wasting my time.

Another part of me begins to wonder if he is right. “Maybe this is a waste of time. Who really cares about this? Am I really qualified to be doing something like this? Will I just be laughed at and be considered crazy?” Those questions are being fed to inner sensitive parts of me that have had no protection against the chaos of criticism…until now. Through the SoulFullHeart healing process, I am beginning to create a space between my inner critic and my inner sensitives. The art that is made helps bring much needed relief to the holding of this critical energy, which can be quite potent when left unfelt by me as the centered self.

This critical voice can begin as a small judgment from something I would normally consider routine such as making coffee. But if that part is up, a simple act, such as spilling, can turn into a bite or a lashing out. “You idiot! Can’t you do anything right?” Ouch. If I don’t hold this and be with that kick, my other parts get kicked. The energy stirs up rage, hurt, anxiety, shame, control, and depression. It is like a rolling snowball. The criticism is left unabated, and it permeates my being. Inside I am a torrent of critical chaos. This is what my drawing above represents. This is what my emotional terrain feels like to my parts when I am not home amidst the storm. This picture was a call for help from my parts. “We don’t know how to handle this part of you, Christopher. We need you!” is what it tells me. Now, in the moment I made the picture I didn’t really feel that. I was just expressing what it felt like in my emotional body at the time. I didn’t have the image in my mind when I started it. It evolved and presented itself. I just let my hand and heart do the work. I later was able to digest this with my facilitators, Jillian and Wayne, and they were able to feel what was happening because they were outside it and could feel it with their clear hearts. This is the power of facilitation.

So there is this “Ah-ha!” moment. I could see and feel what was being brought to me. A reflection of myself back to me. But that is only the beginning. I don’t want this violence inside me to continue. I don’t want my parts to get thrown into the blender again. It is not to say it may not happen again, but if I am not engaging in feeling the pain of my inner critic, it will persist indefinitely. I can try a heavy dose of positive thinking reframes and rewiring strategies, but that is still ignoring this part of me and will only lead to hurting him even more. The next part of the process is to dialogue with this part of me to feel the pain behind the energy. Giving him the space to be heard and felt by me, a safe container, not a mortal enemy. If I come at this part with the energy of exorcising him, he will only dig in more and tell me to go fuck myself. I wouldn’t blame him. But at the same time, I must be challenging as well as loving.

I feel parts of me not sure where this will go, but there is a real need and desire for them to feel my presence with this inner critic. Taking the “heat”, so to speak. I could only do this once I felt more separated from the feeling of despair that arose out of the criticism. The first step was to create, even amidst the heaviness. I would say especially in the midst of the heaviness. The next step was to be felt by another heart-opened other to feel me and my parts and give reflection and guidance. Now is the step of what is called differentiation, where I and the energy of the part are not fused together, but have a bit more separation. I can feel some resistance from this part of me and will need to negotiate any sharing of journaling that would arise out of this artwork. As with any new, unknown adventure what happens next is a mystery until it isn’t. Stay tuned….

Christopher Tydeman has been embracing the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life since August, 2010. He is a SoulFullHeart facilitator-in-training, author on this blog, and he hosted the SoulFullHeart Experience Radio Show. For more information about the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life, visit soulfullheart.com.

Healing Art To Heal Your Heart

Published on by Gabriel Heartman4 Comments
img001
Drawing By Christopher Tydeman

By Christopher Tydeman

I have received three callings. A calling to heal, a calling to create, and a calling to serve. My healing has taken the form of journaling and sessions through my way of life called SoulFullHeart. For years I have felt a desire to reclaim my passion for art, whether it be visual or written, as I share in this previous blog post. I have done much writing, and the visual is beginning to reemerge. The connection with parts of ourselves, which is the bedrock of SoulFullHeart, is made possible through our imagination. Parts of me send pictures to express deep joy and pain. Sometimes words can’t quite express a feeling tone as efficiently and dramatically as a picture. The process of creation itself is a healing, in and of itself. But it doesn’t stop there.

 It was only a natural to feel the power of integrating healing with art. And by art I don’t mean just visual. Poetry and music can also deeply lead us to places we feel deep woundings. These creations reflect back to us, like a mirror, an aspect of ourselves. A part of us that desires to be felt, even if it feels defensive or resistant. I would say the more resistive, the more desire there is to be felt.

The world is full of beautifully tragic creations of art. Someone’s vulnerability outed for the world to see. As I feel this with my Soulfullheart, it feels like a part being prostituted for attention or profit by another part. This pArt (I use this as an integration of the part of us behind the art) dangles on the walls of galleries, or in the cloud of the virtual world. What I would love to feel is an intimate dynamic between the artist and their art BEFORE this occurs. The art becomes a doorway into feeling rather than just a reflection to ponder. It is a gateway to a part of you that needs to felt by you. This pArt can hold a range of congested trauma with symptoms of depression, rage, anxiety, hurt, control, or shame. While there is relief from expressing these emotions, by not “going in” to them, they persist without healing into a more healthy frequency.

I have no experience with art therapy, but can see how what I have described must sound like it. I prefer to call it Healing Art, in the most literal sense. It is a process of you, your art, and a facilitator, someone who provides a safe container for your pArt to be felt by them and you. This is a self-authorizing process. You and your parts determine the depth and pace of your healing. But this is not some meandering and disconnected process. There are fenceposts. Places to go and grow, only to find more places to go and grow.

I am beginning my own Healing Art. I will be sharing these along with any journaling that comes from them. They are my mirrors and doorways. They are sacred to me and will only be shared after fully felt by me. I will be feeling the parts of myself that hold my inner critic, my inner muse, and inner sensitive. I am also going to be hosting an introductory talk about accessing these parts of ourselves through engaging with art in my local area Sunshine Coast, BC, Canada.

 I feel it important to express that this is meant for anyone, not just those who consider themselves “artists”. At our essence we are creation, so we are by birthright creative. You just need your heart and your passion to heal yourself and the world. The feeling of disqualification comes from our inner critic ultimately protecting us from pain. I know I feel my inner critic up as I write this and prepare for this unfolding, unknowable journey. I have some healing to do with this part. This is where I begin. I am curious to feel where this takes me…and maybe you?

Christopher Tydeman has been embracing the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life since August, 2010. He is a SoulFullHeart facilitator-in-training, author on this blog, and he hosted the SoulFullHeart Experience Radio Show. For more information about the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life, visit soulfullheart.com.

Feeling Like There’s No Tomorrow: NTE – Near Term Extinction for Humans???

Published on by Raphael Awen2 Comments

increasing-temp

By Wayne Vriend

Let’s see if I can find some words to share what I’m feeling….which of course assumes that I know what I am feeling. I truly don’t. I’m digesting a series of articles which lay out a convincing presentation of facts from recent scientific studies detailing the earth’s recent average temperature rise. I invite you to take a look beyond the smokescreen debate about global warming, and to see the much greater climate chaos I’ve been convinced is coming, and even very much here now. Here’s one more presentation of the undeniable facts as presented by Guy McPherson, a former natural sciences professor.

Our current global average temperature rise is under 1 degree above our historic baseline when we began recording temperature at the beginning of Industrial civilization. Now if you’ve been lulled to a sweet sleep by the persistence of normalcy and our inborn native and understandable predisposition of our false self to denial, one degree or less can hardly be worth getting worked up about, right? There are lots of other things needing our more immediate attention than that.

Go back to sleep then, sorry I disturbed you. ‘Move along folks, nothing to see here.’ Never knowing what hit you might be the sweetest form of self love you can give yourself. I really mean that. If parts of you are not ready to see this, I so honour that you just might not be meant to see this. Most of the people on this population doubling planet have no way to grasp, hold, and process what is unfolding now. Others of us simply need to know and respond accordingly. Both are true and necessary to what is playing out.

Government and sacred civil institutions taking no overt action to alert or prepare people are totally doing the craziest things imaginable, which tells us they know major shit is going down, and their only hope is to keep the passengers on the Titanic in order. Iceberg slushies (complete with GMO-raised corn syrup and ‘natural’ flavours) for everyone. How can civil leaders justify horrid acts such as a total surveillance state, drone warfare, GMOs, fracking, etc.? It’s all in the name of the lesser of two evils. The powers that be in government and at the helm of our most sacred instituions know what most of us don’t know but are slowly waking up to: that all of us are about to be sideswiped by climate chaos involving near term human extinction. We’ve known and admitted that we are currently losing around 200 species every single day. We just haven’t seen ourselves as a candidate for this onslaught. Most people haven’t been able to see and feel the changes coming to them personally in a meaningful and alive way. The government has all the justification needed for treating us in any and all manner of inhumanity. It feels like: “I will preserve myself before I preserve you when I can’t see and hold meaning to my own mortality.” Only people who do not truly live are afraid of their own death.

For those with the ears to hear and hearts to feel, there is a ton of good news in this apocalyptic runaway freight train. First is that only what isn’t real or alive can actually die. All of life can only be transformed; nothing can be eradicated. We offer in SoulFullHeart that you are not who you think you are most of the time. Nothing changes that for people like a doctor telling them they have only months to live. Suddenly whole layers of meaning invade every moment and every relationship. We are in precisely that time. Which do you prefer, the bliss of ignorance of not knowing something, or the depth of meaning and aliveness found in feeling and facing your own mortality?

Around a near corner for us is a complete and sudden shutdown of the set of living arrangements that we were born into and accepted as normal. Call it the collapse of industrial civilization. We’ve extracted, fought over and burned in a couple of centuries the better part of the fossil fuels that nature took millions of years of process to put there. Nature so unsentimentally tricked us into this trap. I’m pretty sure of it. Mother nature is not afraid of death and rebirth, but welcomes it as a cleansing and natural process. That’s why our current patriarchal collective and our theologies of dominion have decreed that we should ‘subdue her, before she subdues us’. Check it out for yourself…….28 verses into the bible in Genesis. Possibly no greater and more succinct words can be found to grasp the source of our current dilemma. We went to war with nature.

As you can see then, this deal really isn’t new, in the way we think of it. When we learned way back how to grow and store grain, that was really the much deeper beginning of this present era of dominion. (It’s not really all Obama’s and Bush’s fault.) We’ve had some big empire experiments come and go since then, but not one event that so catastrophically and opportunistically changes EVERYTHING and all the things that matter to us in a one moment kind of way. We’ve had five prior extinction events in the planet’s history that we know about. We’ve just never teed up such a big deal as we have in the lead up to this present and sixth one…..making your life and mine a front row seat to experience the pinnacle of the greatest story ever told.

Our western world dominion achievment is truly shining, even with the current tarnish. Electricity coming from holes in the wall every 12 feet around the rooms of our McMansions, lifting a lever and getting clean drinking water coming out of a ‘tap’ often with many more taps and toilets in the house than people. Groceries on store shelves completely unimaginable to our recent ancestors, along with a functioning economic system and global wars to keep it all in momentum. A few dollars for a gallon of gasoline that is said to have the equivalent power of 300 man hours of labour at our disposal at filling stations. All of that abruptly ends though in the collapse of our industrial civilization. It is so truly amazing what we’ve built. Problem is we built it all on sand, and if that wasn’t enough, we went on to hollow out the pillars, making this sudden demolition drop our most spectacular to date. Crazy what you can build with disconnect and denial! Crazier still how you can set it up for the biggest fall that most won’t believe till they see it in ashes, and even then many may not have the ability to grasp it.

We need the industrial civilization to end if we are to survive as a species on the planet. There’s no question about that really, yet part of you may still be in denial about that if you’ve invested your money and self image irreversibly in the deal. But the end of industrial civilization actually isn’t as hopeful at all for our species, as we are just now learning. We need industrial civilization to prevent our 440 some nuclear reactors around the world from going Fukushima on us. Without a power grid, that’s exactly what they do. Mother nature just doesn’t care about what we care about most of the time. She never promised that. We, in a very entitled and bratty way projected onto her our demand for her blessing on our agenda of disconnection from her. She really has no problem with our choice to fuck ourselves. Mary can’t be hailed on this one.

It’s not that Mother Earth doesn’t love us with a penetrating and embracing love. The Divine Mother just has a different reality around love. She is not afraid of death, but welcomes it like shaking your etch-a-sketch, and getting to begin again. She knows and feels that only by our cycles of death and rebirth can She, along with our entire universe, come to know itself through trial and error. We don’t know what is ultimately going on because our Mother doesn’t know what’s going on. She’s doing all of this in the fun of finding out. It’s called never ending discovery. It’s not that our species is evil, but rather that in our journey to discover love we needed to play with evil. So while this collapse feels like an unimaginable big deal that we cannot relate to, it really is as natural and normal as summer, fall, winter, and spring.

She needs us like never before to accept the doctor’s prognosis, we only have months to live. Those months are made up of moments. And it’s only in a moment that you can feel. And feeling is what moves in harmony with death and rebirth. Not feeling is what our resistance to change and metamorphosis is made up of. Mother Earth, our Divine Mother, Our Divine Father, our own Divinity, Yeshua, Buddha and Allah all agree – It’s time to begin feeling like there’s no tomorrow. Because there isn’t nearly as many tomorrows as we’ve been so gullibilly been led to believe.

Wayne Vriend is co-creator and a facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Visit soulfullheart.com for more information.