By Raphael Awen

(This is Day 5 of an ongoing series, to begin at day 1, go here: https://goo.gl/CgrWXZ)

Raphael: Good Morning All. I am feeling the rising excitement of this journey again. It felt so good to time-travel to the early pieces of my life story, feeling how my allegiance to the Demiurge formed and took hold, and feeling all of you feel me, in that.

It also felt good to take yesterday off being Christmas to breathe, to feel and to let in love. Last days journal took over 5 hours just to write, and feel as we went, and to post. I’m feeling an expanded sense of the epicness, if I could call it that, of where this could go, and where it wants to go. I also want very much to feel all there is to feel as we go, and to have fun doing it. If there’s one thing I feel now about hanging around in the past, I feel we should at least rearrange the furniture while we’re spending time there. And the furniture I’d rearrange would be the furnishing of my own heart with more space to feel myself and all my parts courageously doing life, being with life, seeking love. I get to do some more of that today.

There’s a way that even going through hell can be rewarding if we’re willing to feel all there is to feel, feel our why’s, our wants and especially our frustrations. They are all huge signposts. I’ve decided that if it ain’t fun, in this sense of being rewarding, I want nothing to do with it. In my book, it’s now a big Demiurge delusion that life is supposed to be hard, or boring, or aimless. The other thing I’m into is adventure, always have been really, and this journey is looking like about as big a piece as any.

Metatron: Good Morning Raphael. Good morning All, in the fullest sense of the Allness. Rhodes, Merlin, Jim, yes, you too Jim, we’re going to need help from the other side in due time, and Good Morning to this growing posse of hearts, following this, reading this, feeling this. You are the incubation of the epic something that Raphael is speaking to as you let this story weave into the feeling tones of your own story. Let it engender within you the waves of desire and the awakening of each and everyone of your astounding uniqueness and value. This is a seed, and like any seed, it has an infinite number of seeds within it. We’re not about the finite number of seeds contained in an apple. We’re about the in-finite number of apples contained in a seed.

Raphael: I love how you can raise the frequency about 67 notches in 30 seconds or less, Metatron. Wow.

Metatron: You have us on a good frequency as well, please keep going. I just had some juice to let flow through.

Raphael: I so know I wouldn’t have the go for this journey were it not for your energy and guidance, and it’s feeling sooo good again today, thank you.

Before, I go back to my story, Metatron, can you tell me about what the Demiurge is up to with this intention? Do you know if he knows what we’re attempting?

Metatron: Funny you should ask that, I got confirmation just today that he is up to speed on every word. Consider yourself and ourselves engaged to be engaged. And, it feels like he could, and we could use some time to get acquainted further, from a distance, I mean, so take all the time you need to process it all as we go. Your story telling feels important. We have all of time itself to get this right, and it’s urgently what the entire universe is waiting for, both are true at the same time.

Raphael: Okay, no pressure or anything? My…, you have a way with words.

Metatron: In the beginning was the word…

Raphael: And the word was with God and the word was God…

Metatron: And dangit if the Demiurge didn’t see an opportunity to fill in the blank while we waited to come up to speed with this truth and with our own godhood, Raphael.

Raphael: And I’ll bet he isn’t having the best time of it about now? His threats of hell have only tied him to being a jail keeper – not much fun at the best of times, right? I can’t imagine him having any fun, if it ever was fun being him.

Metatron: It’s complicated though, Raphael. On one hand, we created him from our own subconscious, and we commissioned and authorized him to be the monster we made him, and on the other hand, he doesn’t know anything different and is afraid to let go. He is inextricably linked with us till we undo our own creation.

Raphael: Could we say ‘In the ‘re’-beginning was the word’?

Metatron: We’re being invited to feel that with this Journal, with every word, every logos, that we utter; to feel it as being divine reason re-beginning a new world order internally that seeds into the collective…

Raphael: Feeling that pauses my story for a bit…

Metatron: Feeling that actually helps tell your story, Raphael. Go on and we’ll figure where it intertwines as we go…

Raphael: Okay, as I said, I’m getting a big gift from telling this story, and I can feel parts of me buckle in. They were all there, but we never got the space to feel it like we are now, on these levels.

Where was I?

Merlin: You was just getting settled with Mar-yam in the new chandelier swinging church.

Raphael: Thank you Merlin, good feeling your magical presence here. Get this, yesterday, Gabriel gave us a Christmas card depiction of you soaring through the Cosmos, Metatron as a combination of a cosmic cowboy and a skinny Santa Claus, And even Andy riding bareback too, all heading for audience with the Demiurge. I’ll share it in this post today. It’s totally rad, as they say in California. It captures the energy so awesomely.

So, yes, I was on a fairly new track. 21 years old, married, and so hungry to serve God, to make a difference for God, and as I said, a little less consciously, also hungry to escape boredom while I was at it.

After our first year of marriage, and working at pay-the-bills kinds of jobs, Mar-yam confronted me after work one fall Friday as a long weekend was approaching, with the crazy idea of visiting friends 2 provinces away to check into joining in with a mission project they were involved with. We actually left, 6 hours later, after a phone call, and me getting the incredulous look off my face. We knew we were in danger of settling for the norm if we kept this pattern running. We decided it was for us, came home, squared away, gave away, sold off, and loaded up and were back there in 6 weeks.

We shared this uncanny ability to jump ship when the guidance came, but she was usually the one to help me break the spell of whatever the current pattern was, given a part of me’s attachment to familiarity.

Over the years, our desire to get into the cherished ‘full time ministry’ never quite materialized. After a year away in the neighboring province, we returned home where I began finding jobs as a self employed painter with a whole bunch of my innate desires and passions funneling into building that while serving God, or, in order to serve God, as we framed it.

We self funded our way to regular short term mission trips, a few early ones to Mexico with a small, but exciting mission in Tijuana headed by other friends we were close to; One to Hong Kong with the founders of our church, and several to different places and projects in the Philippines that continued over our two decades together. We were Bible School grads, fancied ourselves teachers, and in the groups our church was a part of overseas, the locals were more than happy to let us take the pulpit, with our white skin and all.

We dreamt of our first child, and she ended up coming along for the ride in utero for our first trip overseas. Family; extended family; missionary travel; what was now referred to as a ‘business’ complete with employees; and even building our own home, were all a part of the picture by the time our second daughter came along 6 years in.

As these realities matured and as the desires ebbed and flowed through our lives, something was brewing in my soul though that was very undeniable, but equally being efforted to keep concealed and suppressed at the same time by parts of me. It was hard to put my finger on. During Bible School, a guest prophetic minister had prophesied publicly over me personally during a laying-on-of-hands service one day something to the effect of ‘don’t fight against the establishment’. Though I didn’t have a file for his words that day, they would come back to haunt me in due time.

I was looked up to by our church circle, as well as in each of our families. We both had leadership and budding teaching positions in the church, leading home groups, participating in services. I loved my daughters as much as life itself. Mar-yam and I only had eyes for each other, and settled deeply into being married for life.

In our 10th year together, I watched with a lot of discomfort as the inner core leadership circle of our church went through choosing sides in a personality conflict battle that was enough to blow up our little haven, this side of heaven. Having a conflict of that nature or of that magnitude wasn’t what got underneath my skin, but rather the active suppression of any ability of the men in the leadership circle to face the issue. It was all a default pattern of saving face and a pretense to hold things together for the next Sunday morning, under the guise of ‘preserving God’s house’. I was pretty convinced God wasn’t in as bad of shape as they made him out to be. This proved to be a deeply etched unwavering pattern that came up repeatedly to simply ignore a given reality in the name of not disturbing the sheep. The more I witnessed them, the more I felt at a deep loss combined with a frustration.

One day at early morning men’s prayer circle, we were joining hands praying loudly in tongues (‘motor-mouthing’ as a part of me would later come to call it), calling God into the scenes of our self created chaos, and I felt so pretzeled about asserting that maybe we should be facing the relational issues between us instead of, or at least, along with all of this passionate prayer. When we broke that day, I called Charlie, a fellow elder aside, and told him gently what I felt. He let me finish, paused for effect, looked me straight in the eye and said, quoting Jesus no less, ‘Are you for us or against us?’ Then he turned and walked away.

The moment of my truth finally came for me when I spoke to the men at our weekly Tuesday night elders meeting. I gathered my courage, opened my mouth and said to the 4 others present, ‘Guys, we’re all in a ditch, but I’m one step ahead of you. I’m willing to admit that and you’re not’. They looked at me kind of funny before the pastor did one of his usual lighten up the moment kind of comments.

My resignation letter followed a few days letter. I never did get my status of ‘Elder In Training’ upgraded to ‘Elder’ as the Pastor, a man near my young age, could sense in me the lacking loyalty, that it seemed that not even I was as in touch with.

The growing disparity between the ‘power of God’ that we all adhered to and championed compared with the growing powerlessness we practiced in our relationships with one another was leading me to feel deeper into the relational disparity inside of my own heart. Part of me tried hard to cover it over with new bigger and better projects or clients in my business. Money seemed to keep growing as a result, which often led Mar-yam and I to consider another mission trip.

Around that same time, just prior to this fallout, we decided to take our young family to the Philippines for a little longer trip of up to 6 months to join some close friends on an exciting mission that our church was recently all into. We were being asked to verify and solidify the relationship with the local pastor there and his congregation in hopes of becoming more involved, with more people and more money. The pastor there was reputed to be the ‘former second in command of the communist party’ in the Philippines and was now a genuine, born-again powerhouse for God. The fanfare of it all didn’t thrill me as much as the excuse to see if we could somehow get deeper into what our hearts really found exciting, as well as escape the growing relational problems in our home church. Maybe a brand new infusion of purpose and focus would sort out both me and the church.

It was amazing to watch the needed money come in through the business in time to match the intention, as usual, with a short notice. It was also a good experience to create some space around my tendency for a one track focus in my work life. Within 2 months of planning, we had our airfares for four and money together, an employee to keep the business alive, and 2 close friends to drive us the 3 hours to the Seattle airport.

Something very unusual happened in the airport that day just prior to boarding, and as I’m liking the vibe of storytelling, and you all listening so sweetly, I think I’ll just plow on into that story if that’s okay? This is a lot, how’s it all landing in the moment, Merlin?

Merlin: You got me spellbound, Raphael. What a planet you lived on! I say, rock on.

Raphael: Are these church and God frequencies a bit dense to take in?

Merlin: They would be if they weren’t coming from you, Raphael, but with your heart that’s found a way through it all, I’m liking feeling what it really felt and looked like to be inside,… even to be not consciously wanting or looking for a way out…. Wow.

Raphael: Okay, good, I’ll go with that then, Merlin. Thank you. Serving the Demiurge really is a captivating experience, pun intended or not, take your pick, where we chose it, because on so many levels, we felt we were in the coolest deal on the planet and the only one that had any real meaning for that matter. If 90 some percent of the whole world was going to hell without a personal relationship with Jesus as their savior, then what could compare to addressing that need? I had no clue then about the ocean of unfelt emotional need, and unworth I was still very much carrying around, as I felt God had taken care of that for me when coming out of my teens in exchange for giving my life over to him. Truth is, more money, another mission trip, more status in the church, none of it was able to completely cover over the hemorrhage of what my heart was bleeding into my space.

So, back to the airport in Seattle that day. We’ve said goodbye to our friends and gotten checked in and are waiting the last hour or so at the gate and already, it’s been a long day, with a 16 hour flight still to come including a pit stop in Tokyo, en route to Manila. The boarding gate was filled with a mixture of Filipino and Asian families waiting to board the sold out flight.

Our daughters aged 3 and 5 took to playing a bit with the Filipino children in front of us which felt cute to witness as I again acclimated to my fondness for the Filipino people. It had been 6 years since our first trip there.

A Filipino man was seated next to me in the crowded space, and when the boarding call was made, and as we rustled from our waiting slumber, I acknowledged him for the first time as our children and his had already made a connection.

I asked him where he was heading to in the Philippines, after landing in the capital. He explained that he was just there getting his mother and his children onto the flight. He asked me the same question in return and I told him the name of the province we were headed to, to do some missions work, having recently memorized it, ‘Ilocos Sur’, another 9 hours by bus to the north in this country of 81 provinces, over 7,200 islands, and a population well over double the size of my Canada.

He smiled and said, ‘oh, that’s the province my mom is from, but now she lives in the capital’. I was warming up to the familiar Filipino sounding English that he spoke that I actually missed, and was soon to get a whole bunch more of. 

Naturally, his next question was, ‘What city or town are you going to?’ I was glad again, that I had remembered a bit from my discussions with friends, as we had never before been in the North of the country before, and told him ‘Santa Maria’. His smile grew larger as he said,‘Santa Maria!, that is my mom’s hometown.’ We both took a minute feeling the incredulity of all this mixed in with keeping an ear out for the sequenced boarding calls, an eye on the children, with our boarding passes and passports in hands.

He then said, ‘who are you going to see there?’ Again, I recalled the name as well as the correct pronunciation of the Pastor of the tiny independent church we were going to be working with there, having never met him, but we had spoke to him on the phone a week or so prior. I was sure this was going to end the list of coincidences now stacking up. I told him the name, ‘Marben Magmay’, the first name being easy to remember as it was the Filipino equivalent to my first name at the time of Marvin. His jaw dropped again, and he said with yet another big friendly Filipino smile, ‘I know Marben, I need to get a message to Marben’s brother actually, will you be the one to take it to Marben for me?’

My head was sure spinning about this time as I’m looking at my wife taking this all in as the man found pen and paper and wrote out a short note in the northern dialect, and handed it to me. I recall being a bit too stunned to ask what the message was about and of course, I couldn’t read the local dialect. About then, we said our goodbyes as he needed to get his elderly mom boarded. I learned we had another 10 minutes or so before our row was going to board, so I got up to walk a few paces to try and digest all this.

I took a few minutes to digest what felt like an energy rush through me. There was a lot of prep, money and energy to get this trip to happen, and so far, there hadn’t been anything overtly that could be seen as a ‘big miracle confirmation’ that God, or the Holy Spirit was ‘supernaturally’ leading this journey, other than what we called the ‘still small voice’ inside along with the extra money manifesting naturally with some focus and intention. This coincidence just then was more the kinds of ‘miracles’ that were the coveted stock-in-trade of our ‘full gospel, spirit-filled, word of faith’ type churches we were a part of. We all longed to have personal testimonies like these to share (or brag about) in church. All I was able to make of it all as I stretched my legs prior to boarding, was that God was tipping his hand of favor and blessing, saying a warm and personal ‘hello’, as I couldn’t see any direct significance to the message itself, now sitting in my front shirt pocket that I had agreed to be the postman for. It looked like something as simple and mundane as little more than ‘call me’ along with a phone number as I recall it. How cooler still would it have been if it was really tied to something world changing? Nonetheless, it went in as a deep personal validation, from God, no less.

This so gets to the heart of what the part of me, who was me at the time, wanted from God, a personal validation, the ‘well done, my good and faithful Servant’ kind of heartfelt validation. I had gone from knowing I would end up in hell if I died at 17 to knowing I was now in good with God, and I wanted to let the world know. I was feeling pretty high, as I couldn’t see how else God could be more outspoken. ‘God’ was sending us on this trip.

Mar-yam and I digested the conversation a couple more times as the flight got underway, beginning our way to our first stop in Tokyo, before continuing onto Manila, letting it color our hearts as a very unique personal blessing from God. I loved feeling all this from 35,000 feet.

The story doesn’t end there though, as far as airport coincidences go. Something almost as magical occurred all over again on the next leg of the trip.

But I’m feeling to let some water under the bridge and take this up again next day. Everything in its own time.

Metatron: Wow, Raphael. I’m so feeling the ache for the acknowledgement of God you spoke to, going from the fear of hell to the bliss of heaven, Wow.

Raphael: Oh, yes, there was nothing greater in my books.

Before I jumped ship from the family church to this one, the real reason I did was because their God wasn’t a boring traditional rule maker, but an exciting one that interacted supernaturally in people’s lives, and gave out this kind of personal validation. I ached to feel God approve of me, or I should say, a part of me ached for God’s approval. There was nothing else that mattered. If I could pursue that, and qualify for that, along with a happy family and children at the same time, that was thee deal.

Metatron: ‘Qualify for…..?’

Raphael: Afraid so. We were all so firmly entrenched in a ‘love in return for obedience’ picture, that it would be yet a few more years before I would begin to get under the edges of that, but eventually, more dramas and events later, just that began to awaken in me.

Metatron: I’m gonna pause to take in here and let whomever would like to respond to share.

Raphael: before we pause for today…

Jim: Wow, I’ve got something to feel in all this, but I need to feel some more around it all and maybe share next day.

Raphael: Thanks Jim, or Dad, as Marvin knew you. I’d like to feel what’s brewing for you.

Andy: I like the 35,000 feet part! That’s where the Demiurge doesn’t have any of his sad stuff happening and that’s where I began to learn to fly, and where I still do. Wayne and I have been taking daily spins in our Merkabah all over the place from Golden Earth and back!

Raphael: Yea, Andy, my beautiful Starbeing Self, who once was Marvin, who once was my inner child, now gone galactic, riding the rays with Wayne, who led my life for 8 years more recently, on this other side of knowing the Demiurge.

Did you see you in Gabriel’s artwork riding right behind Metatron, on Merlin?

Andy: It’s like thee best! Thank you Gabriel. If you never hear from me again, it’s only because I got lost in all the dimensions.

Raphael: I don’t like that idea…

Andy: Okay, I’ll try to remember how to get back from all the places I have on my list to see and travel to, but I can’t promise, you may have to come and find me…

Raphael: Okay, that’s a deal. I want to see all them places too!

So, All, Let’s take a pause here again, but not before I again say thank you to the Gathering Posse Of Hearts. If this story is resonating in your heart, then that resonance and your willingness to feel it is creating a quantum something that accesses this realm and makes for a grander result for all of us. The handful of us in this direct story can do something pretty wild for sure, but with you, riding with us and in our hearts together, we can do something so out of this world, that it will take generations for this new arising story to be told, and tolled.
Raphael Awen is co-creator, teacher, and facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Visit www.soulfullheartwayoflife.com for more information about Weekly Sessions, Live Streams, Videos, and Community.

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