Kasha Rosa

My Process of Self-Intimacy: Life As An Initiate At SoulFullHeart Sanctuary Blog Series

Published on March 22, 2016October 12, 2016 by Kasha Rosa1 Comment

This is the third entry in the Life As An Initiate At SoulFullHeart Sanctuary Blog Series. Go here to read the second one.

By Kathleen Calder

As intimate as this blog series is becoming already, I feel like I want to invite you in even more. It occurred to me that maybe the writing we share here, though we intend it to be invitational in tone, may make you readers feel like you are only circling around something and not really in it. Well, in a way that’s true, but in many ways it isn’t.

In many ways, we feel you joining in with us during our Sunday group circles, our shared meals, and our daily activities. We want you to be here. It’s up to you to qualify yourself to at least make contact, let alone take the leap to be here with us physically. I want contact. I want you to be known and I want to be known too. I want to experience you…and of course inside me is the ache to be experienced. This is what I want to animate for you in this writing today. So, with that in mind, I intend to invite you in even deeper to my world and deeper into what I call my ‘process’.

It is no joke to ask someone to leave their world or even their known consciousness behind in order to experience and participate in a new one. I’ve needed this invitation extended to me many times throughout these last four years with SoulFullHeart. I haven’t been an active part of this healing work for the full four years and, in fact, have had to take many so-called ‘breaks’ from it. I put quotations there because if SoulFullHeart is in you, it is you, and there is no real break from it or way of shaking it. Parts of me have tried. I guess that’s how you know your soul-calling: when something is inside you, calling you forward, grabbing your attention, even when you think you’re adequately distracted by other things.

There is nothing more powerful than finding your way to your deepest, most sovereign, and heart-centered choice to be a part of something. Part of me has, for many years, only identified with being a ‘black sheep’. There has been an insistence inside me that there is no way for me to truly belong anywhere or with anyone or any particular group of people. Socially this was a struggle for part of me for many years, until the last one or two years when I started to wake up to my genuine uniqueness based on my unfolding soul journey, which helped to reframe any feelings of ‘not being enough’ for others to accept into their social lives.

I have also found myself thinning out the number of people I would like around me at any one time. It’s not about snobbery or snubbing anyone, but about self-care and self protection. For now my circle is small and intimate and that feels safer as far as holding my need to land in others’ hearts in a deep way and be felt. While sometimes part of me can still find some comfort in hiding the real me in a crowd, most of the time being in a large group feels very vulnerable and uncomfortable for my sensitivity level.

I, Kathleen, want to know and be known more intimately, and I get to live into that every moment that I sovereignly choose to. It is a huge process though, to reconcile the desire to hide and the desire to be seen. I feel this could be true for everyone in the world on some level. Needless to say, at times in my process so far the desire to hide has won out and I have had to back away from being consciously in my process. The thing is, the process doesn’t truly stop, ever. You’re in your own process right now, actually, whether you are trying out any of the journaling we suggest or are just reading our writing. Something, even subconsciously, is bound to go in.

Each time parts of me have tried to abandon our process together, chaos has ensued, moving me away from these three people who I have been so intimate with. It has needed to play out that way and it hasn’t really, either. However, my emotional maturity level simply couldn’t allow it to be any other way. I have been through many shifts and changes in my life and all of the major ones have seemed to come on a tornado of chaos and I have felt like I was literally on fire at times! Change, while difficult for most people, has come easily for parts of me who have been very addicted to it. There has been an ease in running away, and what is ‘running away’ from SoulFullHeart but a ‘running away’ from myself? Running from intimacy is something every human being can share stories of, I’m sure, and self-to-self intimacy is really the true fear, I feel, for most of us – myself included.

The saying: “Wherever you go, there you are,” rings so true for me and is what I experience of life. It is what keeps bringing me back to the support that Jelayan, Raphael, and Sequoia offer me as I keep going into myself with less medicating and without avoiding any aspects of my process that are ripe and ready for me to feel into and heal.

Before I began my process of parts work exploration through SoulFullHeart, I was very social and aiming to become an actress. I had graduated theatre school and actually became certified as an Intuitive Coach as well, since I wanted to not only become a well-known performing artist, but a spiritual leader and author. I wanted to show the world I was a healer and to prove something – rather, parts of me did. The idea of maybe one day becoming too sensitive to party often or have one-night-stands was foreign and undesired in some ways. Part of me wanted to be part of the collective, even though she never felt she truly was and in fact was in denial of how badly she really wanted out. No doubt this was a lot to sort through.

Nowadays, I still want to be seen, but the glamour aspect has been giving way to the idea of just being embraced for who I am at my most vulnerable and authentic core of my being. This would have been so hard to say four years ago. This is why SoulFullHeart offers that people who may be interested in this work take it one step at a time. Parts of us have a lot at stake and a lot they have been working to accomplish in our lives. Deconstructing them needs to be a process for the sake of our own sanity. In some ways, you never truly know when this process begins for you, as it just sort of does, and usually it is on a wave of desire for change and doubts that the life you are leading now is truly enough for you, even if these desires and doubts feel subtle at the time.

It feels good to share a bit more about what my process has been like. In the future my goal is to weave in bits of stories from my process and perhaps some more visceral sharing of what it actually feels like to feel a part of you for the first time. I feel this may help any of you who are inching towards contacting us and taking on that first session, to imagine what that experience could be like for you.

If you are curious to know more about what I have shared today or have any questions for me, my email is kathleen.m.calder@gmail.com. I would be happy to hear from you.

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.

Surrendering to Transformation: Life As An Initiate At SoulFullHeart Sanctuary Blog Series

Published on March 8, 2016October 12, 2016 by Kasha RosaLeave a comment

by Kathleen Calder

This is the second entry in the Life As An Initiate At SoulFullHeart Sanctuary Blog Series. Go here to read the first one.

The day of my arrival, I stepped off the bus in Tomatlán, greeted by the warm embraces of Raphael and Sequoia. Raphael was the first to offer me a hug of welcome. Instinctually I placed my third eye chakra directly onto his heart chakra, and sobbed many tired, worn-out, and backed-up tears as I and parts of me let in that we had finally arrived home and that the process we had been holding around the life we were collapsing in order to return to our sanctuary, was complete at last. The drive home to the SoulFullHeart Sanctuary itself felt long and short at the same time as I held relief, heartbreak, and excitement in every breath.

It is no small thing to let go of a life you have created. In SoulFullHeart we talk about parts of us engaging in and helping to create and hold different chapters of our lives. I have had many chapters in and out of SoulFullHeart in the last four years, some of which I have digested on this blog. This time was very different as I deliberately invested so much more of myself than I ever had before. I believe this ¨going in¨ experience is actually what eventually led me out of this last chapter and back into SoulFullHeart…which I never really left, it feels like. This return feels so palpably different for me too, as this time around I truly feel I am looking for deeper transformation and deeper answers. My ¨seeking journey¨ is officially over and I feel like retiring from it. I have found my vocation and what I really need to keep healing and returning more and more to myself and who I was born to be. It does feel like I am meant to help others eventually as well.

The morning after my arrival, I woke up feeling a happiness in my heart, though still feeling waves of mourning looming in the background. Jelayan checked in with me during breakfast, asking me if I felt ready to start working in the gardens with her again or if I needed some time. I felt like parts of me were eager to get back to work, as it were, and dive back into life here, probably to help ease the transition a bit more. So, after breakfast we readied our buckets with harvesting and planting tools and changed into our work clothes.

Jelayan offered that I could wear a pair of her shoes that were still in pretty good shape while the pair I was intending to work in were falling apart (I didn’t have all of my footwear or my things, since it would all be coming back with a couple also living on our sanctuary when they returned from Puerto Vallarta in their truck later that week). I put the shoes on my feet and we started off down the path away from the house.

Suddenly, I felt a sharp stinging in my middle toe on my left foot and, as I paused to respond to the pain, Jelayan and I spotted a big scorpion scurrying away. Evidently he had been hiding in the toe of the shoe I was wearing on that foot…and I had neglected to even think to check them before putting them on! We were only steps from the house (thank god), so we both calmly made our way to the kitchen to prepare the natural remedies we have learned to deal with in responding to such incidents. Jelayan herself had been stung last year, so she remembered what worked for her and different ways to stay calm. I was so surprised to feel myself as calm as I was.

Jelayan chopped up about six cloves of garlic and put them all in a bowl with some honey and gave me some hibiscus water, very heavy on lime juice, to drink while I swallowed the chopped garlic. The honey wasn’t so much for a medicinal purpose as for the purpose of helping me get the garlic down, though I’m sure its medicinal properties as an antibiotic helped me out too. Then she placed some lime and a slightly chopped clove of garlic on the area where the scorpion stung me. The pain ebbed and flowed during this first hour as I took in the medicine and also Jelayan’s healing touch on my now traumatized foot. Her presence alone helped to keep me calm, and we both feel that the most critical thing you can do is keep calm in a circumstance like this one.

Eventually she helped me to my room where I put a woolly sock on my foot and obviously was now resigned to stay in bed for the day.

The worst symptom I had was the throbbing pain in my toe that overwhelmed my entire foot at times in intense waves that had me clutching at my mattress and bed linens. It took about a week for my foot and leg to feel normal again and now, two and a half weeks later, my toe is finally starting to feel back to normal. Wow. What a process.

Digesting the experience SoulFullHeart style means looking at what ¨scorpion medicine¨ offered me through this incident, and all the different reasons why it happened. Yes, it was partly a careless move on my part to slip on a shoe without inspecting it first, so there was a wake-up call in that. Yet, the fact that it laid me up in bed for about three to four days since I couldn’t walk well enough to work, was an indication that something in me needed that time to just ¨be¨ after making such a big move. I needed that time to rest and digest what I had just dismantled in my life a bit more, and also, I feel like the movement of the toxins through my bloodstream may have helped me detox from some of the energies I took during the last nine months.

In Ted Andrews´ book, Animal Speak, he offers that the scorpion represents transformation and that it tells us that transformative changes can either be chaotic or calm. When I think back on this last chapter away from SoulFullHeart, but also on many of the major beginnings and endings in my life, I see a pattern of mostly chaos without a lot of surrender. It is possible that without the physical need to just be with myself for my first few days back here, I would have restarted my life here in a much less calm, maybe even chaotic way, in terms of my emotional body. It could be that the scorpion helped me find another layer of me – one that really can handle such intense circumstances and still hold it with as much grace as possible, addressing my physical and emotional needs instead of burying them, which really just tends to lead to more trouble, maybe even chaos, later.

There’s undoubtedly so much in life to be careful of, and so much that can cause us pain, and yet all of it seems to offer a message of transformation being possible if we can surrender to it in the right moment. It feels like surrendering to the circumstance while holding our parts and our spine is step one, as demonstrated by the calm urgency Jelayan and I somehow embodied, and diving into our physical and emotional needs around the circumstance is step two. Each and every major event is another opportunity to go inside yourself and it is my sense that we draw these occurrences because of our need to do just that – go IN. Feel what’s at stake. Feel what it is you want and need.

I sincerely hope I don’t have to draw another scorpion sting, especially as this rounds up all of the intense things I have been through in this last life chapter, which I will share about eventually as they become relevant.

I appreciate you reading and taking this in! If you feel moved to contact me directly, based on this or any of my other blogs, my email is kathleen.m.calder@gmail.com.

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.

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

Published on March 1, 2016October 12, 2016 by Kasha RosaLeave a comment

By Kathleen Calder

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.

My Week Back At SoulFullHeart Sanctuary

Published on February 25, 2016October 12, 2016 by Kasha RosaLeave a comment

By Kathleen Calder

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 ítems that part of me adamantly wanted to remember to bring with me ‘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. 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 ‘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

Published on May 13, 2014August 21, 2016 by Kasha Rosa2 Comments

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.

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

Published on March 7, 2014August 21, 2016 by Kasha RosaLeave a comment

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 “authentic” 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 “emotionally matured” and “centred”. 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 “centre” 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 “fuck 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 “unreasonable” 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 “coast” through life, though parts of us would probably prefer that most days. 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 “me” 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 🙂

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.

The Fight for Equality: A Suffering Loop for Femininity

Published on February 1, 2014August 21, 2016 by Kasha Rosa

By Kathleen Calder

…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 “battle” 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 “fighting” 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 “powerful”, 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 “see” 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. Go here to read more of her writing and visit soulfullheart.com for more information about SoulFullHeart.

Feeling Our Contribution To The Causes Of Severe Weather

Published on January 9, 2014January 9, 2014 by Kasha Rosa

By Kathleen Calder

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 “punishing” Toronto, I’d like to offer that Mother (who is most commonly felt as “Mother 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 “held” 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 “spiritual/new age” dogma that insists we ignore the state of the world because “it 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

Published on December 1, 2013December 2, 2013 by Kasha Rosa2 Comments

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.

Admitting Your Apathy To Find Your Compassion

Published on November 11, 2013November 12, 2013 by Kasha Rosa7 Comments

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

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

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

I recall going to the I Can Do It! Conference presented by HayHouse year after year for about 4 years in Toronto, Ontario. While there were and are some genuine hearts and minds who write and speak there, I can feel how I was caught up in “seeking” and not ready to be found. I wanted re-frames and a more positive spin on what I was facing and actually not really feeling my way through in my life, especially around romance and discovering my own psychic gifts. In other words, it became medication I had to keep renewing my prescription for. Part of me wanted to be told, “you’re okay!” when she really didn’t feel that way. I call this part “Katie” – 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, “you’re okay, you’ll get through this and you will be one of those authors on that stage someday. You’ll have found your soul family and you will never have to have the normal human life that so many around you have resigned themselves to. You’ll finally be seen and loved”. These words were like honey and they kept me fed for many years. But…how can holding a goal about being “seen and loved” still be about being in genuine service to others? It doesn’t feel like it can because then it’s ultimately about you. This isn’t true compassion and honestly it isn’t hard to feel how many healers on stages care more about being seen than they do about helping people, though they do offer some moving and helpful experiences to others at times. Many of them, if you read their bios, had very painful lives prior to finding their “gifts”. Pain they were never felt in and therefore couldn’t move through. Pain their daemons use as an excuse to keep taking over their lives and avoiding the real work of healing yourself so you can actually serve 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 anyone else’s. Apathy towards humanity and fully inhabiting life as a sacred human. Beneath the apathy is real, heartfelt care that isn’t pretty or glamorous but is beautiful and emerging all the same. Kind of like a newborn baby covered in gook. At least that’s the image I’m being offered in the moment. Like that newborn baby, there is real pain and tears that come with that whole package. It’s all being held in my personal connection with the Divine and with my SoulFullHeart facilitators supporting me. I can feel 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 you about at most conferences and seminars. What I feel to leave you with, whether you identify as a healer or seeker or whatever label, is that it’s important to find your apathy. You don’t need to make it “bad”, but feel where it comes from and why it’s there. Nothing feels more toxic, degrading or destructive than offering false care to yourself and others, no matter how many books you sell. You and I can’t help the world if we don’t face this truth 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.

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