A Day in the Life: Life As An Initiate At SoulFullHeart Sanctuary Blog Series

By Kathleen Calder

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The day begins.

I wake up to the sound of a rooster greeting the dawn with his crow. It isn’t an invasive call for me, since my room is actually quite far away from where he normally keeps his brood. In fact my sleep, thankfully, is rarely interrupted by the sounds of the animals due to my location. If my sleep is interrupted at all, it’s normally because of an unfelt reaction or something that part of me is trying to work out.

Usually the light is just breaking over the morning as I draw my covers down and slide out of bed. On the average morning my heart feels ready to greet the day and my friends and teachers, knowing and feeling our genuine desire to connect to one another through all events of the day, even if that means feeling through tension and being in conflict at times.

Breakfast is just one of the three meals we share together each day and we either take turns on collaborating or one of us chooses to lead when it comes to the making of each one. Meals are an opportunity for us and parts of us to check in about our processes and what we feel happening within us as we live out the day while also feeling each other. So much happens on an emotional and not just physical level for all of us. I feel this is true for every human being, it’s just about having enough fluidity and space inside yourself and direct support from those close to you in order to really feel it and let it move you. I had almost forgotten about the richness of my inner reality until coming back to live here again. Our personal sharing at the table can be triggering for parts until they learn to lean into it, especially since it is a brand new experience compared to any past attempt to do this sort of sharing at mealtime with birth family members or even friends and to cultivate this level of intimacy with them.

After breakfast is complete I quickly get myself suited up for organic gardening or whatever other task is happening that day. For me so far the task has mostly been gardening, which I feel is good for me on so many different levels. Connecting with the plants is not something part of me ever thought I would be doing as deeply as I have been lately but it does seem to naturally be starting to happen as I take in their needs for water, weeding, and general attention. I feel something coming back to me from them in the form of harvest but also healing energy. There have been moments when I have been alone in one of our gardens and suddenly I feel tears start to surface as I feel the safety and support from the love of nature around me to feel whatever I am feeling in that moment. There is a way that nature seems to move us towards healing at an exponential rate since it seems to have a much greater capacity to give and receive love than even the amazing humans around me can!

I am often in the gardens with Jelayan lately, helping her with replanting, watering, and weeding. It’s time to replant a number of our plants right now so she needs the help and I’m enjoying taking in her knowledge so that I can maybe lead some more in the gardens some day if it feels right. I value having this one-on-one time with her too as she is a woman who has healed so much and yet is also so in her own self. Taking in her healthy templating means a lot to me, and perhaps even more now that I was away from it for almost 10 months. Learning to collaborate together is a big deal and I am working on letting it in, since most of the woman-to-woman relationships I have experienced have been strained by unconscious (or sometimes conscious) competition and energetic bullying. We’ve had a lot to feel through and work out in our relationship but I feel a new opening for us as the appreciation for being in each other’s lives has been renewed. Connection with her is a serious blessing.

Sometimes the morning routine shifts based on our individual emotional needs. Yes, this is valued above all productivity. For me personally, I get that if I don’t take the time to be in my process, then not only does my productivity tend to suffer, but I am less present overall for my relationships with the others and also for life in general. This can actually be a dangerous thing here at our Sanctuary where there are scorpions, snakes, and unpredictable events can happen.

So, that being said, sometimes the mornings are stiller for me in terms of physical activity. I have and continue to have much to feel through as I continue to land here, decompressing, detoxing and de-medicating overall after my many months away. During those months away, I was immersed in a lifestyle that carries only hints of the amount of love I feel here at the Sanctuary amongst the others but also with the trees, plants, and animals that surround me. So, as expected, my emotional body in the form of my parts, has begun to surface to be felt again and I find myself needing space and breathing to just be with me or to ask for space-holding and facilitation from Jelayan, Raphael or Sequoia, since at times that is actually what a part needs. All three of them understand the process of mourning and letting go that I am walking through with my parts right now as the layers over my natural sensitivity continue to melt away with their love and support and that of the Divine as well.

After we have lunch together we usually rest and check in with ourselves some more, or go off to the river or wherever we may want to. Basically it is free time and often we stay indoors since it’s the hottest part of the day. Sometimes I use this time to nap and/or journal or go on an etheric journey to visit and check in with my guides and parts. The other day I used this afternoon time to have a session with Raphael, since a big part of my process lately has been with a very young and vulnerable part of me who needed to feel a loving father-like energy holding space for her. It was a tender process and I have discovered that she is actually a part of me that holds much of my core essence (what makes me who I am in an authentic way). I am still working with this part of me and find that the space and time of being on the Sanctuary is very nurturing for her and actually is what encourages her to come out more.

Later in the afternoon there is a second round of watering for all of the gardens that must be done. After that there is a bit more rest time before dinner prep begins. Dinner is usually also eaten together, though we all stay flexible with our needs, keeping in mind that sometimes parts of us would rather eat alone, depending on what is coming up for us emotionally.

After dinner the day completes and most of the time I retreat to my room for more decompressing, journaling, etheric journeying and/or reading. If I want to I can go for a walk or head up to our garden and our plot of land that we call Tranquila to watch the sunset or to just be. Once the sun sets it gets dark pretty fast and this pushes up some fear for my parts about the wildness around us. I want to face these fears though and find a way to feel more harmony and trust with the wildness that may just reflect an untapped wildness inside of me that parts of me are afraid of. Jelayan started to realize this about her parts’ own fears or inhibitions about the wildness of our Sanctuary and writes about it in her recent book Keep Waking Up!.

Sometimes it can feel hard for parts of me that miss having Netflix or a movie to veg out on, or even a local pub to visit and have a beer at the bar! Yet it surprises me how much easier this has become, now that so many more of my real needs are being met on a daily basis and the need for comforts like these has dwindled considerably.

It felt important to share with you about my average day here at the Sanctuary and what it is like to stay here as an initiate, to paint some picture for you of what your life and process here may look like should you decide to stay with us. All of my current process, I feel, is eventually going to make room to let in more people and their own processes. I want to feel your story as much as I want you to feel mine. I love the connections I have with others and I want more too. This life is not glamorous, though it is beautiful and, if you are ready to let it in, you won’t be able to ignore the truth of this and the truth of the love we live into and embody more of every single day.

Kathleen Calder is an initiate at the SoulFullHeart Sanctuary and you can read more of her writing here on this blog. Please visit SoulFullHeart Sanctuary for more information about staying with us and virtual sessions.

 

My Week Back At SoulFullHeart Sanctuary

By Kathleen Calder

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SoulFullHeart way of life asks us to be our biggest selves, yet also gives us room to breathe and feel our way into our next chapters, holding us the whole time.

I made a checklist. It contained Γ­tems that part of me adamantly wanted to remember to bring with me β€˜in case’ I needed them. Even with the intention of staying only a week, there is so much to remember to take with you physically in preparation for the off-grid, rural lifestyle. I held some concern that I would have to readjust after being away from it for 9 months and that it might be challenging to jump right back in.

Of course this happened on several levels since the SoulFullHeart Sanctuary is not just a physical existence. Even for the person who is not choosing to be emotionally or spiritually conscious, it wakens something on the inside and catalyzes movements within and without that are maybe unexpected. Though I guess that, based on my own experience of returning there, perhaps mostly everyone who goes there goes with an intention – something they want to find clarity about or something that simply needs to move inside them, even if it can’t be named in the moment.

I could hardly wait to give the gifts that I brought for my friends and teachers. Coming from the city, there is a sense of being able to give abundantly. However, I feel as if the gifts I received from them were worth more…reminding me that being given the opportunity to land inside an open and loving heart is the greatest gift of all. These three people have known me for four years now. We have been through a lot together and not just in a physical existence sense, but in terms of emotional terrain. They are easily the people who know me best. The reason? I can’t perform for them for long. My parts, etheric or emotional, cannot dance in front of my authentic inner reality without being felt and detected. These people will not be duped and they will not stand my shrinking. I could not stand theirs either. SoulFullHeart way of life asks us to be our biggest selves, yet also gives us room to breathe and feel our way into our next chapters, holding us the whole time.

I arrived at the Sanctuary with the intention of finding clarity for my life situation and what I should feel into doing next. I have been in a relationship for the last few months. It has been very loving and with a man I have adored but I have been missing the exploration of my soul consciousness, which I seemed to mostly put on pause after leaving the Sanctuary in April. My romantic partner and I have had different focuses in our lives and that has been good for us as a couple in some ways, but has been hard for us in others. It has also been unfair to him that I haven’t been happy living in Puerto Vallarta. He was the main reason why I wanted to be there. I wanted to inhabit life with him and see where it took us. We moved in together quickly but I don’t regret a single thing about that. It was what we both wanted and I knew from the beginning that it could bring the relationship to a speedier completion, or of course that it might not either.

My years in SoulFullHeart, my templating from Raphael and Jelayan as my teachers and my relationship with Sequoia (he was Christopher at the time), all taught me to go in, in and in, holding any fears but following the love flow in front of me, trusting that no matter where my heart takes me I will benefit and others will too. I’m feeling now how life is not a game of finding something to keep forever. We aren’t entitled to that. Lasting love is possible, as Raphael and Jelayan have found, but it comes with a journey of finding your own love overflow that cannot begin until you authentically love and mate with yourself. Β All the time in and out of relationships is practice and experimentation. The only formula for keeping love is the one that keeps us in stuck relationships that don’t deepen or evolve and keeps us from growing and healing individually.

In a way, I feel humility when I think about this, but also I feel like I breathe a bit easier. I guess that means that I have held a lot of stress in the past of making a life phase or a romance β€˜last forever’ when I inherently know that it may not be meant to and that in some ways I may not actually want it to. I now feel much more open to where life wants to take me next, trusting a bit deeper that whatever happens next will only lead me to more healing and feeling more complete inside myself.

My time with the others, but also my time alone, felt more fulfilling during this week at the Sanctuary than it did in the past. So much so that I feel drawn to live there again. I have just completed all there was to complete in Puerto Vallarta, including the romance that I have held dear. The latter is the toughest part right now. The details of that I will keep to myself for now since it’s pretty raw for both of us.

I feel as if my return to the Sanctuary is a return to me. It is my self-love and my desire to have more self-love that I can share with others and help them heal too that led me there originally and is leading me back there to live. I am born to be a healer, especially during this time of transition for the planet and humanity. I have an emerging self that I have barely tapped into in these last 28 years. I am a complete mystery to myself in the moment and I find that refreshing. I’d rather feel like I am an unfolding story than a book that has already been written and read twenty times. All I have right now are clues to who I could be and am becoming and I can’t imagine another place where I can explore this than at the Sanctuary with the support of my most intimate beloveds.

Kathleen Calder is an initiate at the SoulFullHeart Sanctuary and you can read more of her writing here on this blog. Please visit SoulFullHeart Sanctuary for more.

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

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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 β€œskip 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 β€œskip 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 β€œbaby of the family”. I had a lot of worth to prove – to β€œeveryone 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 β€œin” 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 β€œdriver’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 β€œimmaturity” but as β€œarrested 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 β€œskip a grade” in life. It also does not entitle me to the role of β€œteacher” 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.Β Go hereΒ to read more of her writing and visitΒ soulfullheart.comΒ for more information about SoulFullHeart.

What It Truly Means To Be Me: Owning My Emotional Reality

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By Kathleen Calder

I am here in my emotive, energetic and physical body. I am not here to transcend my reality and I am certainly not here to waste this lifetime on not living into what it truly means to be me.

It took me over two years involved with this SoulFullHeart way of life for it to land, but I finally woke up to something very important during a session yesterday – what makes your authentic self β€œauthentic” is real, in the moment feeling and outing your emotional reality from a grounded place within yourself.

I’ve been under the impression, or perhaps another part of me has, that the SFH Self (what we call the authentic self), is essentially non-reactive and only seems reactive when fused with a part and/or choosing to validate and advocate for a part’s emotional reality. As it turns out, this simply isn’t true. Life isn’t about finally reaching a state of non-reactivity in order to be considered β€œemotionally matured” and β€œcentred”. It isn’t surprising to me that given how powerful I have felt my own emotional reactions to be that the majority of people in our culture seek some way to invalidate themselves and to only come from a place of β€œcentre” or calm. Stillness lives inside of all of us but refusing to be triggered by others actually doesn’t do us or them any favours.

I remember that a number of years ago I subscribed to the idea that anger is fine depending on how you use it. In other words, I tried to find ways to channel it that didn’t tell anyone I was angry at them directly. I also tried to find ways to just not feel it, but it would eventually find ways to come out. We are meant to flow with our emotions, not build walls around them…and not journal them away either. Journaling can help emotions flow and move in a way, but your journal can’t give you reactions back and help you dig deeper. People can. Life can.

I am not a victim to my feelings, though they haven’t always garnered positive feedback. I am entertaining this new energy of simply owning how I feel in an authentic, no bullshit, in the moment way. What’s sad is that outside of SoulFullHeart it is much harder to trust I will land somewhere, but I am not a victim to that either. Through ongoing work with my parts on my own and in sessions, I am building a deepening trust ground inside of myself. Trusting that all of my reactions are sacred, at least to me, and that there is no greater relief than to let them out responsibly. I have enough emotional healing and maturity now to trust I will not resort to name-calling, though at times there may be a defensive β€œfuck you” that has to surface. I can hold that. I can also hold my apology afterwards if I hurt somebody, but I also trust that their hurt is good data to them and to me. Hurt and pain is a roadmap meant to surface, not be stashed away for another day or even another lifetime.

Yesterday’s session was a couples’ session with Christopher and I. We have traveled a rocky road together, having had several incarnations of our coupleship over the past year. In some ways we are more solid than ever, but there is still one thing that trips us up – owning and outing how we feel in a vulnerable and authentic way. Parts of us have been wanting to tiptoe around each other still, caretaking one another but also fearing that if we do out how we feel we will no longer have love flowing between us. This is always possible, no matter what, however. So the real cost as I feel it now, is to ourselves and our own healing and growth. If the knife of our words can only be turned inwards, we are poisoning ourselves and there is nowhere for any of it to move and heal. If I do not out how I am feeling about my mate, no matter how β€œunreasonable” part of me may say it is, I am not honouring my true feelings and they are getting no air. Neither is he. We are in this to react to and trigger each other. We are not in this to β€œcoast” through life, though parts of us would probably prefer that most days. Β The cost of that is no deepening intimacy or closeness. The cost of that is an expiry date no matter what, for at this point on our healing paths, there is no way I will stand for stasis for long and he probably won’t either. As scary as it feels to rock the boat, the true cost is β€œme” if I don’t. My truth and heart get suppressed and my spirits become dampened with a victimhood I have put on myself.

I am here in my emotive, energetic and physical body. I am not here to transcend my reality and I am certainly not here to waste this lifetime on not living into what it truly means to be me. Join me? www.soulfullheart.com πŸ™‚

Kathleen Calder has been embracing the SoulFullHeart Way of Life since January, 2012.Β Go hereΒ to read more of her writing and visitΒ soulfullheart.comΒ for more information about SoulFullHeart.

The Fight for Equality: A Suffering Loop for Femininity

By Kathleen Calder

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…the fight, in and of itself, is masculine in nature and energy and is in fact still placing men above us, keeping us in a suffering loop that we can not get out of.

Women’s suffrage and the political movements that accomplished many things, including women having the right to vote, were important without a doubt. This morning though, I find myself feeling deeper into this question of the inequality between genders and what the battle for women’s equality really feels to be about. I’m feeling in the moment that even calling it a β€œbattle” is actually very masculine. I feel this is actually at the core of all our efforting to be regarded as equal to men…that the fight, in and of itself, is masculine in nature and energy and is in fact still placing men above us, keeping us in a suffering loop that we can not get out of. There are many ways in which trying to achieve a more masculine picture of ourselves actually keeps us down and in a dis-empowered state. Instead of advocating for what makes us different and standing in the power of that, so many of us are still β€œfighting” what needn’t be a fight at all. Perhaps it is time now for us, as women, to invite the men more into what makes us authentically feminine. We are softer, not weaker. Most hyper-masculine men could use more softness, more vulnerability and a deeper awareness of their own emotionality that has been buried under layers and layers of deep cultural and family conditioning. These are things that we as women, by nature, seem to be more aware of on our own, and yet so many of us try to be braver, tougher, stronger, smarter, all in terms of a false picture of what it means to be β€œpowerful”, which is actually so inauthentic to us (and probably to most men too, if they really felt into it). Real bravery, strength and smarts needn’t come from a picture of what this means from a male perspective. The longer we hold this false image as a benchmark, the longer we will be suffering.

I get and have felt inside myself that within the majority of women there is a deep soul-wounding that comes from many lives of persecution in one way or another, usually with men at the helm leading as the primary persecutors. I would love for us to feel into why we want to do the same sports, receive accolades for similar achievements, lead the same politics and organizations, or have the same role in the family as men. We have different capacities inside ourselves, making us different, not lesser than, this doesn’t look or smell the same as the men we behold on the TV and in our personal lives. Also, why do we want to bend over backwards in order to please men with how we look? I’m not saying I advocate for dressing down on a regular basis and refusing to shave your legs, but I do feel there is a more healthy, much more balanced way to even feel our own attractiveness.

I am still working with a part of me that is self-conscious and sometimes very hard on herself for how we look. There is still some self-image that I am working through with her and some of my other parts, which extends into what they feel makes a woman attractive in many areas. It has been important for me to feel the attention and validation I didn’t get from my father, a key man in my life. Without my dad giving me the love and attention I deserved and needed as a growing young woman, I had a couple years of a more masculine approach in my relationship to men and sex. This is just one example of wounding in my heart that has led to a deep lack of self-worth and decisions that have stemmed from that, often unconsciously in an effort for men to finally β€œsee” me. All part of me wanted was for dad to see me, underneath it all. For a man or even a woman to call me out on what wasn’t really me and also on the ways in which I was fighting my own femininity. With SoulFullHeart, I have finally found men and women who call me back to my heart, and so often the mystery of what is actually real in my heart arises anew again and again, in the shape of desires, wounds, and who I really am in my essence.

I would like to leave you with what Jillian has said a number of times – what the world needs right now, in this state of our evolution, is more Divine Feminine consciousness. This means, in part, more men and women embracing what authentic femininity is. Really it feels to be an arising mystery, but there is something about stepping into this unknown territory that is mystical and feminine in and of itself. What I have felt so far in my own journey with this is that being feminine does not mean that everything is soft and fluffy, though there is definite softness and strength within it. There is also a spine and a fire, yet it is not the same as the male spine and fire. The truth is too, that we need men in their essence to contrast with ours in order to find what true femininity is – embracing a partnership and collaboration between genders for co-empowerment instead of reinstating a power struggle that has lasted for centuries.

Kathleen Calder has been embracing the SoulFullHeart Way of Life since January, 2012.Β Go hereΒ to read more of her writing and visitΒ soulfullheart.comΒ for more information about SoulFullHeart.

Feeling Our Contribution To The Causes Of Severe Weather

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By Kathleen Calder

It’s easy enough to point fingers and say that any one person or group of people is at fault for this. However, all of us, every single human being, has played some part in the creation of the strong natural imbalance that has led to such severe weather patterns. We have all let our unfelt emotional pain fester to the point of not letting ourselves feel our deep compassion and love for our earth and all its creatures.

With the major weather crises we have all witnessed happening in North America alone, it isn’t surprising that we are looking at scientific details to figure out what’s going on in our climate. During times of such distress, as we are especially witnessing on the east coast of Canada and the U.S., it also feels necessary that we look at the whole picture when feeling into causes of extreme weather – the political, emotional, and the literal climate, altogether.

In SoulFullHeart, we offer and live into a view of healing yourself that is holistic and we take in all factors that could have led to where a person is at emotionally and physically. We do not isolate emotional or physical symptoms and treat them individually or as separate entities. This offers us deep and effective healing as individuals and as a group. So why not extend this holistic view outwards and use it for looking at and feeling what’s at the root of the intense weather happening in the world?

Let’s look at one example that is close to my heart. Before I moved to Vancouver, Toronto was my home for four years while I went to university there. Part of me left that city with a sour taste in his mouth, feeling tired of the pollution and also of the surprising amount of conservative thinking and politics. Shortly after I moved away, Rob Ford was voted in as mayor. My friends at the time who still lived there were shocked that he managed to get into office, considering he already had a stance that was anti-cyclist and I believe also anti-transit to a certain extent. Expanding bike lanes and creating a safer city for cyclists and also expanding public transit are two major ways in which the city can cut back on pollution. Also, and I know this is looking at physical appearance which may rub some people the wrong way, but if the man can’t take good care of himself, how is he supposed to be trusted to lead a metropolitan city? His drug habits make this apparent, but it’s also clear when you look at him, that this is not a self-loving or respecting man.

I feel that the weather happening in Toronto right now is an outward shake-up, showing up in the climate, that is happening in response to the political climate. Instead, though, of taking a stance of saying that the Divine is β€œpunishing” Toronto, I’d like to offer that Mother (who is most commonly felt as β€œMother Earth”), wants Toronto to wake up. The degree of pollution, both literal and energetic needs an upheaval. It’s sad that it had to come to this – that Mother Nature needed to re-balance herself in a way that has unfortunately held many deaths. I say β€œheld” because I feel Mother holds and feels every single one of us in our suffering…suffering we had to reap ourselves so that we can wake up.

It’s easy enough to point fingers and say that any one person or group of people is at fault for this. However, all of us, every single human being, has played some part in the creation of the strong natural imbalance that has led to such severe weather patterns. We have all let our unfelt emotional pain fester to the point of not letting ourselves feel our deep compassion and love for our earth and all its creatures. This has taken shape in the form of supporting factory farming practices by our unconscious consumption of meat, which has led to a staggering amount of pollution both in our skies and in our water. We have also relied heavily on such products as plastic, which has become a huge problem in our oceans, being consumed by wildlife at an alarming rate, and is not biodegradable, so it remains in the environment for eons. Not to mention that plastic is created by oil – another way in which we have literally been raping the planet and the atmosphere. I understand that oil has been a number one commodity for so long that it’s hard to imagine the state of our economy without it, but the affects on the environment are insurmountable at best. Oil spills are costly to our wildlife and our own health as well. The foray into nuclear power has over and over again proven detrimental. We cannot afford the risks these practices pose to our health and our environments health. The earth is sick and She is trying to re-balance Herself, like our own bodies do when we endure fevers and other physical reactions.

Aside from literally harming the environment in these ways, we are also harming the environment and each other energetically every day. Every unfelt, undigested emotional trauma is yet another excuse to harm ourselves and one another. This is what I feel fuels our need to follow religious dogma to the point where we feel God is actually telling us it’s okay to kill, rape and pillage. The inverse of that is following β€œspiritual/new age” dogma that insists we ignore the state of the world because β€œit isn’t real” and in order to become truly enlightened we need to disengage from it and from taking responsibility for it. I feel this goes directly against why we signed up to be human in this life, in this time when being deeply engaged in our feeling, physical bodies is so necessary to save our planet. This all goes into Mother’s heart. This is part of what She needs us all to feel into. Taking that step to feel into and recognize our accountability for the state of the planet is a big deal and isn’t easy, but is so deeply necessary.

This is a lot to take in, but it’s important to remember that we are more powerful and therefore much more responsible for our world than many of us think…and are at the same time, much more capable of saving it than any of us have ever felt comfortable believing before.

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.

To My SoulFullHearts

light at end of tunnel

To My SoulFullHearts

To make a sound through the din

How much energy and love do we need to make this sound?

Maybe it’s alive on its own

And it’s actually in the quiet

That it can finally be heard

Maybe there’s no sound we could make

And it just is

And hearts have to want it and find us and find it was in themselves all along

The echoes of old paradigms are strong and yet the walls they are echoing off are crumbling

When the echoes have died

Their hearts will be revealed

And there will be revolt and revolution, bloody at best

But dark and sinister as it could be

There is light at the end of the tunnel

and love as a tourniquet

Those who ask for the bandages

will realize She was there holding them all along.

Β 

Admitting Your Apathy To Find Your Compassion

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I couldn’t blame myself or part of me for not caring anymore. So many years of bullshit and suddenlyΒ realizing how much of that I shoveled on myself, let alone on my relationships with others. I had years ofΒ trying to stand out from my birth family, declaring myself to be the β€œblack sheep”, which is true inΒ many ways but was a declaration that led to much entitlement around what I should and should notΒ have to experience and be vulnerable around in my life. I did the same with virtually all of the peopleΒ around me, family or no, setting myself apart from everyone, somehow and someway.

My daemon,Β out of painful, held deep disdain towards humanity made sure of this. He wanted me to be driven towards aΒ fame trajectory. It was rooted in the performing arts for a time, but was also about becoming a spiritualΒ guru of some sort.Β It was my dream (or part of me’s dream) for many years to become an author andΒ speaker, engaging audiences from a stage and maybe even reading them out as a psychic/medium.Β The invulnerability of the desire I held to do and be this is only coming to light now. The deep-seatedΒ apathy underneath it all is being revealed, inch by inch. Luckily my daemon, Gideon, is willing to beΒ open and vulnerable in sharing with me his experience with this, wanting to heal and move it, which isΒ big for an awakening Daemon.

Now when I feel my old desire to be an important figure in the β€œself-help” industry, I am feelingΒ with Gideon, in real time, some of the layers he detects are really at play in a business climate that isΒ supposed to be about β€œlove and light”. While there is genuine work being offered out there that isn’t allΒ about transcending your pain, much of it still is. This is what keeps people coming back for more. TheyΒ get hooked like a child on sugar. If you don’t keep going back to these dealers and spending money onΒ books, seminars, etc, you find yourself back in the same ditch you started in. This happened to me.

IΒ recall going to the I Can Do It! Conference presented by HayHouse year after year for about 4 years inΒ Toronto, Ontario. While there were and are some genuine hearts and minds who write and speak there,Β I can feel how I was caught up in β€œseeking” and not ready to be found. I wanted re-frames and a moreΒ positive spin on what I was facing and actually not really feeling my way through in my life, especiallyΒ around romance and discovering my own psychic gifts. In other words, it became medication I had toΒ keep renewing my prescription for. Part of me wanted to be told, β€œyou’re okay!” when she really didn’tΒ feel that way. I call this part β€œKatie” – my main way of interfacing with the world until very recently.

My daemon at the time was happy to keep bringing her more messages of, β€œyou’re okay, you’ll get through this and you will be one of those authors on that stage someday. You’ll have found your soulΒ family and you will never have to have the normal human life that so many around you have resignedΒ themselves to. You’ll finally be seen and loved”. These words were like honey and they kept me fedΒ for many years. But…how can holding a goal about being β€œseen and loved” still be about being inΒ genuine service to others? It doesn’t feel like it can because then it’s ultimately about you. This isn’t trueΒ compassion and honestly it isn’t hard to feel how many healers on stages care more about being seenΒ than they do about helping people, though they do offer some moving and helpful experiences to othersΒ at times. Many of them, if you read their bios, had very painful lives prior to finding their β€œgifts”. PainΒ they were never felt in and therefore couldn’t move through. Pain their daemons use as an excuse toΒ keep taking over their lives and avoiding the real work of healing yourself so you can actually serveΒ and heal the world in a real way…which isn’t necessarily a famous or glamorous way, either.

I have recently been feeling where Gideon holds apathy about my/his own healing, let alone anyoneΒ else’s. Apathy towards humanity and fully inhabiting life as a sacred human. Beneath the apathy is real,Β heartfelt care that isn’t pretty or glamorous but is beautiful and emerging all the same. Kind of likeΒ a newborn baby covered in gook. At least that’s the image I’m being offered in the moment. Like thatΒ newborn baby, there is real pain and tears that come with that whole package. It’s all being held in myΒ personal connection with the Divine and with my SoulFullHeart facilitators supporting me. I can feelΒ the layers I must heal through in order to continue letting in real love from myself to myself primarily.

If I don’t start there, there is no overflow of love to offer others. This is the real work they don’t tell youΒ about at most conferences and seminars.Β What I feel to leave you with, whether you identify as a healer or seeker or whatever label, is that it’sΒ important to find your apathy. You don’t need to make it β€œbad”, but feel where it comes from and whyΒ it’s there. Nothing feels more toxic, degrading or destructive than offering false care to yourself andΒ others, no matter how many books you sell. You and I can’t help the world if we don’t face this truthΒ and, in fact, we will only create new problems and perpetuate current ones if we don’t.

Visit soulfullheart.com for more about the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life.

Feeling And Healing The Beauty Competition Between Women

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By Kathleen Calder

I looked around at the full magazine shelf. Almost every magazine targeting women had a beautiful woman on the cover, bearing her midriff, with a headline nearby shouting something or other about learning to look like that. As if that is the way every woman should look with a little hard work, or even some β€œfast and easy, no-gym-required, flat tummy tips”.

I began glancing across the headlines on each one, feeling a part of me tempted to pick one up and leaf through to the section she was most interested in – the one that promised big results fast. It is swimsuit season after all. Not long before it won’t be anymore, but that’s not important. All that matters is looking good at the beach. All that matters is looking better than the woman next to you.Β It seems we are constantly being told to compare to each other and assess our personal worth based on what someone else has and we don’t. I’ve had several parts that grasped onto that when I was very young and have only recently started to let go of constant comparison and fervent jealousy, sometimes even hatred, of other women.

I feel that these magazines are aware that they perpetuate this toxic dynamic. They are aware that they aren’t just telling us we need to look better, but that we need to look better than each other in order to prove our worth. It doesn’t feel like something within us, or some part of us, wants to be objectified and held up as β€œbeautiful” by media standards, but it does feel like they may want that simply as a means to an end. An end of feeling ugly and fat. An end of being lonely and mate-less. An end of feeling unworthy in comparison to other women who have somehow managed to attain what we’ve always wanted via having beauty that seems to get you everything you’ve ever dreamed of. Wouldn’t it be nice if that actually existed? All we seem to be getting instead is a β€œbeauty” that we strive so hard to attain that we actually shut out everything that’s good. A part of me has used not having it or being it as an excuse to keep people out…to keep love out. To keep us in stalemate against other women, against a mate, and against myself. To actually stop potential friendships in their tracks because she felt β€œtoo fat” and undeserving to let them in, which I have learned is only a symptom of a much deeper problem of an ingrained sense of unworthiness and dis-empowerment.

My sense is that we, as women, are meant to nurture each other emotionally, spiritually, physically, and psychically. Magdalene, one of the faces of the Divine Mother offering a conscious connection through SoulFullHeart,Β offers that this is true Divine Sisterhood and it is our birthright. If we are fighting and comparing we are not dancing together. We are not uniting our feminine healing powers and working together to heal this world we live in. This world that so needs us to work together. Competition amongst women is a potent diversion from what is really at stake. United in love we are more powerful than we can imagine.

Like most women, I didn’t grow up with a healthy template for how to embody the nurturing Divine Sisterhood that Magdalene offers us. Both consciously and unconsciously, my sister and I were constantly at odds. She was good at sports and I was good at dance. There wasn’t much support or encouragement in either camp for one of us to explore the other’s chosen passion. I am as much at fault as her for not recognizing what we did to each other in this area, and all the other areas in which we would be in contest (including, of course, the area of body image and diet). I also have a sense that my mother and I had some unconscious competition going on as well. She spent time worrying about me, which in essence kept me small. My bigness and my longing to live into it scared a part of her deeply. There was also an intrinsic envy that I was willing to take the risks I did to move forward in my life, sometimes carelessly but mostly because I dared to dream and hold my desires as attainable. Something I have never felt her hold as a possibility for herself.

Competition amongst females is so ingrained in the psyche of women that it’s hard to be acutely conscious of it. It becomes β€œnormal” for us to criticize each other openly or even to simply look each other up and down, scanning for weaknesses or something we have that they don’t and vice versa. I’m exhausted by this dynamic and find myself longing for more women to be conscious of it so we can work through it together. This doesn’t come without great courage and a recognition that there indeed is a problem and something needs to change. My relationship with Jillian and my growing Magdalene-consciousness, has helped me to find my courage and a new template for how we can relate to each other as women. They have helped me become aware of all of the ways in which I was unconsciously attempting to compete with Jillian and together we are finding our way to Divine Sisterhood. She has also given me a new template for how to relate to my body, which has been of huge importance in shifting toxic dynamics between myself and other women.

My parts’ relationship to my body is and always has been at the root of my drive to compete. For some reason, the female body has been seen as problematic and it has been shoved down our throats, literally, by these magazines telling us what to eat and what to do to look β€œgood”. This totally dis-empowers us with regard to our own bodies. Magdalene offers that it is actually innate for women to know what they need to eat and when for what reason. It is not so mental and research-based, though that can help if we don’t take it too seriously. We are women and we are naturally intuitive. It is actually very patriarchal to think there is a textbook-way to take care of our bodies and look our best. It is also very patriarchal to think there is only one way we should look and that we should strive for that no matter what the cost to our souls, bodies and hearts.

I am imagining now how different the world would be if we stopped competing and chose love instead. It’s a powerful picture…and the global healing that could arise from such efforts would be tremendous. We have only to put down the magazines and look inside ourselves.

VisitΒ soulfullheart.comΒ for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life.

When Lightning Strikes Your Tree: Healing Through Rapid Changes

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By Kathleen Calder

There’s no perfect way to deal with a personal crisis. Just as there’s no perfect path to β€œenlightenment” or to the life you’ve always dreamed of.

I’ve had a number of personal crises in the past few months. My most significant romance in my life so far coming to an abrupt end; finally mourning all that I have left behind in all of my dashes toward a new life; realizing that I now have to β€œgo back into life” after being so beautifully immersed in this way of life we call SoulFullHeart, for the past 6 months or so. This last one has been the hardest pill to swallow for my parts and my Daemon. The romance was a part of this immersion. Its completion was a part of my waking up to the necessity of this change, at least for this next phase of my life. ByΒ β€œimmersion” I do not mean that I was sequestered or actually feeling totally separate from the world in any way. That’s why we call SoulFullHeart a β€œway of life” instead of simply a β€œprocess”. I was living with a mate who is also involved in SoulFullHeart and socializing almost exclusively with others engaged with SoulFullHeart during this time. It wasn’t that I didn’t want anyone else to be in my life, but I felt it necessary to cut the cords of old relationships that aren’t in line with the personal healing I need and the new view of life and relationships that I need to explore.

I turned 26 this past Tuesday. I’ve been β€œspiritual” for about as long as I can remember and have constantly looked for the next stage of my evolution. Now I finally have to do what I expected I would have to for a while now – get down off the mountain and give myself permission to be 26. While embodying all that I am and all I have learned, with the support of my beloved SoulFullHeart family and the Divine Mother, I must start stepping back into the world. I don’t expect to have to face poverty like I had to before, nor the disconnected relationships of every kind. I have much stronger boundaries now. They will be tested. I’m finding the most challenging part of this is to not hyper-track my fusions and parts. This is crazy-making, as I’ve noticed lately. It feels like my Daemon, Itsan, is both worried and fairly confident about these next steps for me to take. Daring to be in my bigness in a world and demographic that can be unforgiving. Of course he wants to me to track my trailing-edge as much as possible so that I don’t repeat the same β€œmistakes” over again. Chances are that some of them will be repeated, but at least I have a more centered β€œme” that can handle them differently… maybe even better than before.

Lightning struck my tree, but I’m healing the trauma that my parts experienced because of that. I’m finally learning how to really land in my process with them and have them land with me outside of sessions and group. Not that I hadn’t been working on this all along, but now that the stakes are much higher, it makes it both easier and harder to do this. This is one of the greatest gifts that has come out of these crises. Another one is that my vulnerability has helped me to surrender and lean into the Divine Mother more, closing the gap that my parts were feeling between us and her. The feeling of journalling with Her, being held by Her…I couldn’t do this without Her claiming me and me claiming my connection with Her. I feel like weeping when I feel this. When Itsan feels this. He is so happy to be helping me make this connection for it also helps him. It gives him more confidence in his ability to partner with me during all that is happening and all that is to come.

I feel my connection to past lives in the resiliency that I am displaying now. My soul has been through hell, over and over again. In some ways, this is nothing compared to what I have been through before. I also realize that half the world is in awful torment on a daily basis. I read about it on the news and I feel it in the air. This makes what I’m going through feel even more survivable and I draw strength from that as well, keeping in the mind that I also want to help the world somehow. Right now though, it feels that there is something to the personal healing I’m doing now that may actually help heal something on a broader scale. At the very least, I know that healing the world begins at home, within me, and I feel that the world cannot change without personal healing coming first.

I hope that when lightning strikes your own tree that you find your way as well — Whatever path you are on, whatever road you take.

VisitΒ soulfullheart.comΒ for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life