Author: Raphael Awen

Ascension/Divine Union Teacher. Parts/Soul Aspects Facilitator. Soul Scribe.

Beyond Making The Body Bad: Healing Our Ingrained Inauthenticity

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By Wayne

We live in an age when inauthenticity has been deeply ingrained and conditioned in our society and relationships, including the relationship that we have with ourselves. We seek pleasure, but settle for distraction. We hunger for life’s sweetness and nourishment, but settle for the supermarket lies of processed food. We long for passionate engagement in life, and settle instead for a job offering security.

If you are like the old version of me, you rate yourself on how well adjusted and good at coping you are with an enduring lack of fulfillment. You pride yourself on how you don’t lash out at others and how you seek God and character attainments to find your way through life sanely. Or maybe, unlike the old me, (but arguably, a step healthier,) you are angry and pissed, and you don’t try to hide it, but, on the downside, remain stuck there in a frustrated loop of settling.

This managing of our desires instead of embracing them for the lifesaving signposts that they are is at root of so much agony in our lives and society. Where did it come from? How did we get here? What brought us to this mutual buy in on such a wide scale as to call this suppressed state normal? Why do we reward those most well adapted to this strategy?

A bit more of a mental answer is that both science and religion came to an agreement, (underneath all their appearances of being at odds with each other) and that agreement is that the body cannot be trusted; that your body is bad.

Religion’s alarm is that your body ‘fell from grace’ sadly through no choice of your own, but held against you none-the-less, and eternally at that. The alarming message is that the untrustworthiness and evil of your own body, (though originally created by God), now fallen, is that you must not rely on it in any way. The message is that the body’s desires are tainted, sinful, and will only lead to more pain and punishment.

Science presents us with a strangely similar message.  For all of its’ vast knowledge of the human body, science tells us that matter is all there is; no higher purpose; no higher design. None. Not within or without, beyond the mechanics of that body. Only cause and effect. In other words, the body itself possesses no innate loving and guiding wisdom of its’ own. Again, the message is that the body’s desires are not connected to anything loving. Instead, the body’s selfish desires are to be will-powered over and disciplined into submission, lest they leave you deprived of all health.

In other words, the message has been that the world of spirit and matter are two separate worlds. Purposeless and despairing, both science and religion have stripped us of our noble and lofty sovereign state of feeling the blessing of our own bodies.

A more feeling and less mental answer to the question of how did we get here, would be to simply open your heart and look at any body part of yours.

Try your hand, for example. Really look at it, feel it, study it, listen to it. Yes, it has a voice and it can talk to you. Give your hand the gift of your full undivided attention for a few moments. It can tell you what it likes and what it doesn’t. Ask it if it feels like matter and spirit are in fact separate, like it is just a blob, a machine, with no innate wisdom or guidance, or purpose.

What if it is a lie that matter and spirit are not the same? And what if it is this lie that is at the root of both past wounding and present lack of fulfillment in your life? What if it is at root of your inauthentic expression in your life?

Soulfullheart begins with a feeling knowledge of divine goodness of your body and your emotions. And, not off sometime in the future after you’ve resolved a few pressing issues, but now, you can turn to your body’s innate wisdom for guidance on where to go next.

Coming back to loving and honoring our body is a huge step towards seeing more of your authentic self, or what we call your soulfullheart self, express into all the areas of our lives.

Be good to yourself though. You are biting off a big piece, and one thing will lead to another.

This writing was inspired by the thoughtful words and spacious energy of Charles Eisenstein’s The Yoga of Eating: Transcending Diets and Dogma to Nourish the Natural Self.

​Visit soulfullheart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart healing process and here for more articles about the body.

Your Most Courageous Story

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By Leonardo

(Wayne’s Note: Leonardo is the part of me that Soulfullheart recognizes as our daemon, or our soul guardian. I feel Leonardo as the part of me eager to express and lead others into more of themselves. I felt his desire today to express around a favorite theme of his and share it with you, which is an aspect of his and my most courageous story.)

A deep thing about you is that you subscribe to a story. The story you subscribe to has everything to do with your hopes, dreams, desires, fears, and passing moods, and ultimately, the fun you are having or not having.

And there is an even deeper reality to you than the story you currently subscribe to. Many stories are capable of being played out in your life. You are a story player, like a record player. You are capable of playing a different story than the one you currently tell. You, as an experiencer-of-story itself and a teller-of-story is much closer to who you really are, than the chosen or inherited story you presently tell.

Your story could be about love or hate, abundance or scarcity, control or trust, adventure or guarantee, knowing or not knowing, fulfillment or boredom, competition or co-creation.

What’s more, you are also the writer of your story, whether you realize it or not.

It is most common that the story you grew up in is the story that you will play out for your entire life, and in turn pass on to others. This is because your needs for comfort and familiarity often trump your needs for love and learning new ways that life can be. In this way, it will strongly seem that you simply inherit your story, rather than lead it. To many, there will not even be any awareness that they are captive to story in their lives. The feeling that you are responsible for your story is one that many don’t want to feel, and work hard to live their entire lives as a testament to that chosen belief.

Stories are what we try on in the search to find out who we really are. Stories are ultimately what we let go of, but only when we are done with them, and when they are done with us.

Being engaged in seeking our truer stories is much more fun than mindlessly living out stories passed on to us.

We resist when others try to force their story on us, or advance their story at our expense. Your right to your story is one of the most sovereign things about you, and when others disrespect that, you do well to part with them, and feel the loss in it as well.

But when others simply live their story for us to see, without superiorizing, we are often attracted to their story. It hurts when others hold their story as more valuable than they hold you as a person, because the message they send is that your story is more real and more important than you; that people don’t really exist, only stories do.

As a soul being, after any given lifetime, you will probably awaken from your unawareness of the story you played out and assess that you would like to choose a different story in your next life, and awaken to your creative role in your story.

Some of us, through personal crisis, change our story mid life, and go on to explore more than one story in a given lifetime. This often hurts to let go of the people so dear to us who are not ready to explore in the same way you are. It often feels like being disloyal or disobedient to God to try on other stories in your lifetime. But it is actually, being loyal to yourself that feels so strange and uncomfortable.

All of us will eventually come to see that we must recognize and take stock of the story being played out in our lives. We must go on to take responsibility for our stories, and see if the story we played out is a worthy one or not. Would we like to live that story again? How fun was it really? Is it a story that will get told over and over again for the beauty and lessons of it, or is it a story preferred to be forgotten?

What the entire world is actually waiting and aching for is for you to live your most courageous story.

​Visit soulfullheart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart healing process.

Emotionally Conscious Weight Loss

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By Wayne Vriend

Never has there been better weight loss information than what is currently coming to light about how our bodies relate to food and exercise; about the depletion of nutrients in our food supply; and about how obesity rates are rising in our society.

Why is it that at the same time as we are getting more help with the situation, that the problem keeps getting bigger, slowly, but surely, like an expanding waistline?

Most people have been advised, (rather unfeelingly, I would add) that you need to think positively if you are going to conquer your weight problem; that if you look, sound, and feel hopeless, you are most likely going to stay that way.

So then if thinking positive is the key to getting in control of one’s way of life in relation to food and exercise, then why is that approach such a dismal failure? Do negative people prefer being negative?

It is only when we consider our emotional body that we gain some insights into these questions. By ‘Emotional Body,’ I mean who you are as an emotional being and how we emotionally feel about our life. Changing our eating habits to more alive foods and letting go of habits and foods that are actually a form of slow self suicide, has all to do with self love. Our inability to let in love is getting much closer to the real issue underlying our weight struggle.

In SoulFullHeart, we offer that you have way more to your emotional body than you have acknowledged. Sure, part of you wants to lose weight, but have you ever considered or felt the part of you that feels safe or comforted by being overweight? This part of you wants to, ‘leave the weight right where it is thank you, and take all your self righteous health crap out of my face!’

You are left being at war with yourself; with the part of you who wants to lose weight and is trying to gain power over the part of you who wants to keep things the same.

It is only by getting to know both of these parts of yourself intimately that real and lasting and wholesome change can be let in to your life. Letting in is very different than powering through.  If part of you is strong enough to pave over the part of you addicted to crap food, is that really the kind of healing you are after?

Recently, I got to the place where it feels like the tide had finally turned in my own life. Despite good health and a physical line of work, I have gained around 10 pounds each decade or so of adulthood to where, at 51 years old, I was 35 pounds over my ideal weight, actually in the obese category.

Then, 3 months ago a friend invited me to be his guest for an afternoon hot tub and sauna at the local gym. The front desk staff put all ‘guests’ through a few minutes of sales intro and a tour of the facility, and before it was complete, I surprised myself and signed up for a years’ membership. Something in me said ‘go for it.’ I signed up for sessions with a personal trainer as well.

The sessions were intense, but also helpful in terms of engaging in a real workout. I don’t recall ever sweating so intensely. I was amazed by the simplicity and the intensity of the simple exercises, several of them using only body weight, and others only simple equipment. An exercise ball, a few dumbbells, a bench. The trainer helped me also assess my food habits and make suggestions.

I’ve lost over 25 pounds in just under 3 months, have gained a noticeable change to my muscle mass, and I feel quite different about my body and well being. I’m looking forward to reaching my goal weight, conditioning and deepening vitality.

The amazing thing is that it has been relatively easy and fun. While it has taken the necessary time commitment and changing eating habits, I’ve found doing all of that desirable instead of a drudgery and sacrifice. I’m not feeling deprived.

I recall being in a gym membership a few years prior where I struggled to get engaged and find a rhythm and exercise routine that opened out for me, and eventually it all fell by the wayside (as it does for so many other people). Now, instead, I found the whole experience with getting in shape motivated by a conscious self love that wanted to learn about healthier habits and food choices, and then in turn wanted to give myself those gifts. I found myself naturally enjoying letting go, one at a time, of foods that don’t enliven me.

So what made the difference this time around?

By engaging in the kind of work that Soulfullheart offers, I have gotten to know the more hidden parts of me, the wounded parts of me who sought and needed the comforts of my old lifestyle habits and the weight blanket around my body.  What’s more, I’ve been able to show up for the needs of these parts of me and that brings change on a much deeper level.

It’s interesting the root meaning of the word diet is ‘way of life.’ The foods we eat are very deeply about our way of life. Who we presently are as emotional beings is also most deeply about our way of life.

Your ‘way of life’ is a sacred journey in this life and it has taken you to where you are now, including your struggles with weight and food. Each habit you’ve been given to and each pound of weight gain is also a part of this sacred journey. It’s not less sacred because part of you doesn’t like the downside of it. Because you are a sacred being on a sacred journey, the good news is that, it’s all sacred; your choices, your weight gain and loss, your health decline and improvement.

These are all gifts to you this life that you ultimately control the direction of, but the path there involves getting to know and embrace yourself in a way that you haven’t known up until now.

I want to offer to you the Soulfullheart path to getting to know yourself in a much more intimate way than you’ve ever imagined, including finding who you were meant to be on a physical level just naturally arising as part of the healing.

​Visit soulfullheart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart healing process.

Dying in Submission or Thriving in Surrender?

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By Wayne

Here’s an important question when it comes to relating to a any group or leader, or religious organization: Are they asking for my submission or my surrender?

If you come to a mentor, or a leader, or a group, whether it’s in the realm of spirituality, business or even family, for support, guidance or direction; putting this question on your radar can make or break your allegiance, as it should.

This question has been a guiding light for me over many years even when it was more subconscious than it was something I could put more words around as I will attempt now. 🙂

When a client comes to work with us in Soulfullheart work, we need them to lean into us, to see us as able to help, to see us a resource. This is true whether you are going to a dentist, an auto mechanic or a priest or pastor, or joining a group of any kind.

But how we, and they, relate to that ‘leaning in’ makes all difference in the world.

A leader who says that they have the truth; energizes that they have deeper knowledge; the path to your truest growth; and that if you lose sight of that, you will have to live with the penalties of being on the outside of their blessing, is using fear to bring and keep you under control and is asking for your submission.

A leader who offers what they have to offer, who even makes a bold claim as to what it can do to help; and invites you to consider it for yourself; who acknowledges that you are a sovereign being; who acknowledges that the healing gifts he or she offers don’t get to go anywhere without the participation of the client or seeker; who energizes no disdain for your choice to say ‘no,’ is asking and waiting patiently for your surrender.

One suppresses your power, the other enlivens it. One is afraid of your bigness, the other welcomes it. One sees your strength as a threat, the other sees it as an asset.

The difference here though is usually not so obvious, or we wouldn’t keep stubbing our toes or breaking our hearts over this question. Here are a few ways to look deeper and ascertain for yourself if the frequencies the group or leader are emitting are more about seeking submission or surrender:

How does the group or leader relate to those who are no longer a part of it? Does it hold more respect or more disdain? This is an important question because ultimately we end up leaving every group we join. And this question you can easily find the answer to before you join.

The other big one is how does the group feel on a transparency level? Most of us are now suspect that the politeness of politicians is a cover for lack of transparency and designed to gain and keep power. This way of being in the world is of course nearing it’s end as more and more of us can see through that for what it is.

Does the group come off as having more of the proud answers to life or instead the humble questions? Are they in the realm of knowing all the time or can they breathe in not knowing?

But let’s say, you’re already in deeper, have been for a good while, with many parts of your family and social and even possibly your financial life tied in in deep ways, and you are increasingly chafing at what feels like leaders being controlling and working to maintain your submission, and even masking that as asking for your surrender. What do you do with that? You might already know that there is no space within the group to openly question the leader without being labeled as disloyal or having a bad spirit, or just not ‘getting it.’ If that’s the case, the question for you isn’t whether the group is healthy or not, but more about how to find the courage to leave.

And that’s the kicker, because the time spent in submission is designed to erode the spine you would need to leave and say ‘no more.’ Alternatively, the time spent in healthy surrender is designed for you to see and determine when the growth you came for is achieved and that you are being called to move on, that you are ready to move on, with some sadness, sure, but not with any implanted fear of failure, lingering trauma, or feeling of being destitute.

Submission erodes your power and takes it from you. Surrender awakens you to your power and enhances your relationship to your own power. Surrender can never be demanded, it can only be freely and powerfully given. Surrender breeds powerful equals, submission breeds underlings.

Soulfullheart would take this question a step farther by asking a couple more questions that look at this same issue as it relates to our relationship with ourselves as well as our relationship to the divine:

“How has a more controlling part of me demanded the submission of the more vulnerable parts of myself?” and a second part to that question: “how has that process enabled me to stagnate in groups that no longer serve me?”

and:

“How has a controlling submission picture inside of me to the divine affected me with allegiance to a false god or an atheistic ‘f-you’ to the divine?”

We create in our outer life what is true in our inner life, and then our inner life moves, and our outer life follows.

The Cost Of Finding You

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Image

By Wayne

If you already know that much of your true and deeper self as well as your soul’s purpose for being here is threatened to remain unfulfilled this life, and you’ve felt how the conspiracy to keep it that way starts inside of you, and only secondarily and at your authorization is that conspiracy’s power held by others over you, then you know that changing it will require choice and action on your part. Right?

But this awareness in you didn’t start just last week, it goes back a long way. You can probably recall and share stories about this awareness arising in you and the choices that followed. The teachers you embraced; the groups you joined and left. But the ache comes back to you to live inside of a bigger context, and in deeper meaning, and in greater joy and depth in your daily experience. Which is surprising really, given that much of your previously esteemed paths are not so valuable to you now.

This creates a push-pull in the spiritual seeker. These paths held you for a time, and were even a part of your sacred journey, but something you expected them to deliver, didn’t happen, or you’d still be there, right?

What are the one or two things, if you found them in a spiritual group or leader, that would reawaken your soul journey and compel you to come back on board? Conversely, what are the negative things, if you found it below the surface in a spiritual group, that would be a deal breaker for you? Do you know? Knowing what you’re looking for will save you from unexpectedly being taken again by the next shiny object in the form of a spiritual group or teacher.

You may want to pause before reading the next paragraph where I mention what mine are, so you can ask yourself what yours are before having mine in your head.

For Jillian and I, the big ones are about how far does the respect for individual sovereignty go. Or said in reverse ‘how much pressure is there for you to come under subtle forms of control?’

Any offering that purports to help you find you by putting you under control has obvious integrity gaps, just not so obvious to you and I while we were invested in them. Falling back into conformity is so understandable given our need for love and to hold an identity, but what we conformed to obtain is diminished by the inauthentic way we obtained it.

I think the reason you are taken like me with these questions is that you know something about you. You know that you expended a lot of time energy and money in the past seeking this deeper you. You know that given the right conditions, you are likely to do it again, even as you are feeling your reluctance to do just that.

I want to offer you a new path that promises to find your sovereign self in a deepening way, and let’s you self-validate the results.

And, what’s the cost of that?

The cost is the willingness to let go of what you find to be not you.

How far would your current group or spiritual teacher support you to truly live that?

The Tar Sands – Dirty oil and the future of a continent

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By Wayne Vriend

I’m reading, “The Tar Sands – Dirty oil and the future of a continent,” by Andrew Nikiforuk. This book is a prophet’s call in our time…convincing, damning, and a wonder the author’s voice hasn’t been silenced.

I am shocked at how compelling greed and falseness is through and through our systems of government and business. Where have true leaders gone? Gone they are, we are a ship without a rudder, about to be hurled on the rocks of our own folly. Hopefully to some soft landing that saves us from ourselves.

The shocks come in waves; the shock of the living conditions in Fort McMurray, Alberta, the main town at the heart of the Tar Sands; the shock of the working conditions, the shock of the inflated wages and stunning cost overruns, the shock of the estimated 40% of workers high on cocaine and other drugs just to cope; the shock of the environmental protections agencies standard rubber stamp report of ‘no significant damage’ to the environmental impact study question at hand.

You have to be immune not to shocked by what you read about and feel in these pages.

The shock goes deeper however, than a ‘us vs. them’ kind of reaction. The shock goes into our collective addiction to cheap oil that has fuelled (pun intended) this reality. This is something we have co created as an industrial society and it is something we must together uncreate. It doesn’t seem however on the surface at least that there is much evident collective will to reverse this mammoth race to more and more raping of the earth, and plundering everything in our path for a feeling of security. But this is where mother earth will hopefully come to the rescue to save us from ourselves before it’s too late.

Scary too is our current Canadian government’s evangelical christian leanings that hold that the earth is soon to be burned up by God himself and a new heaven and a new earth popped in it’s place. And it’s belief that people who get worked up about saving the planet just don’t get that the far more important job is saving one’s soul from eternal torment in hell. This, of course, can’t be outright admitted, but look at the environmental track record and our recent pull out of the Kyoto accord. Something much bigger than just a political persuasion is at work here.

God’s kingdom is coming to Canada, and it’s a boom for the tar sands, like it or not. But the huge cost and devastating environmental impact can’t be underestimated.

​Visit soulfullheart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart healing process.

The Collapse: Helping Us Find Our Way

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By Wayne

For over a year now, investors around the world are holding their breath watching the drama unfold over whether the Greek Parliament will choose to default on its’ debt or instead to ‘kick the can down the road’ by complying with the IMF’s crushing austerity demands in return for yet another ‘loan.’ Everyone in this power play knows, but won’t admit, that the newly loaned money cannot – and will not – be paid back. So, why all the fuss getting Greece to accept new loan money? Because this would buy a bit more time and delay the seemingly inevitable collapse a bit longer. It would buy a bit more time to scramble for a bigger scrap of control or power.

Authorities are ever reluctant to simply state what they know, especially in this case with Greece: ‘This ship will sink.’ When a leader hits a wall and can’t get through it, their leadership is in complete jeopardy and the power advantages that come with it. A true and genuine leader should be able to say, ‘I’ve hit a wall and don’t know the way through, but I’m looking for it.’ This admission, this confession, would be honest and transparent, but would also probably cost the leader their following. People generally choose the leader who gives them best feelings, even if (and especially if) they are not based in reality.

The Bigger Picture is not:

The bigger picture is not just about the economic collapse of Greece and all the dominoes that would fall as a result of it; or the global unrest of the Arab Spring countries; or the riots that just occurred here in Vancouver over our beloved Hockey (the way we Canadians like to relate with our suppressed rage); or about our contracting economies; or Obama’s ever expanding wars; or our oil reserves drying up; or mother nature’s unprecedented (in our lifetime at least) droughts, floods, tornadoes, tsunami’s and nuclear catastrophes; or the mass animal deaths that have occurred this year. The bigger picture is not even just that life as we’ve known it and created it is moving unstoppably now on a conveyor built towards profound change that will affect every last one of us, everywhere.

The Bigger Picture is:

The bigger picture is that what isn’t REAL is collapsing and what is real is being reborn. And if this process doesn’t continue happening, the truth is that you and I don’t really want to be here on this planet.

So what is ‘Real’ ?

Is how you relate to money real? What about how you relate to time? Are your face-to-face friends real? How about your Facebook friends? Is your career and the feelings of security it affords you real?  Is your sense of the Divine real?

‘Real’ – when it all boils down – is about something being ‘Real-er’, as in more real. A walk is more real than playing a video game, for instance. And, more real yet is a walk in a forest over a walk in a shopping mall. More real still is feeling, while being in the walk in the forest, the interconnectedness of all life, instead of focusing on achieving your exercise regimen in less time than yesterday.

Your existence is as much a profound mystery as the thousands of year old trees you and I are conditioned to be mostly oblivious to. But profound mysteries are hard to draw nourishment from, to feel as real, and to let in as things that can make us feel good and alive about ourselves in our everyday lives. So we accept abiding with lesser things as real; we crave drugs and false perspectives to help us get by. Lesser justifications such as ‘I owe, so off to work I go’ or ‘I don’t have the time for that’ or ‘I have to get ahead.’

Here’s where The Collapse comes in.

And, it’s good news.

You and I don’t have a hope in hell of ‘making’ ourselves or others more spiritual, or more contemplative, or more connected to nature, or more engaged in what really matters. The truth is most of our efforts to become more centered or more engaged in what really matters actually achieve the opposite because they are rooted in the belief and culture and lifestyle that we are in fact not fully connected right now to the Divine.

In other words, you cannot become any more connected to the Divine than you already are, but you definitely can become more aware and conscious of that reality, just as you can feel a whole lot less connected to the Divine by making an effort to become closer.

And herein lies the rub: How THEN does that effort to become more conscious of our already existing connection with the Divine not just become another self defeating religion and internal and externally played out conflict?

The truth is we are too deep in the soup of our falsely created world now to find our way out by ourselves. I can’t tell you how we will find our way. I can admit, however, that I can’t tell you, and that’s more than most will afford you. I guess I am a little proud of that fact, and that helps to mask the hurt I feel of feeling so largely alone in this choice, to seek realness over influence.

The Collapse, however, can tell us and lead us in the way out of this soup. It can sort us; it can let die what must die in order for our ‘realer’, ever emerging, truer us be given the permission to arise.

The chaos and hell you and I and this planet are about to go through can only be felt as arising goodness if we can feel that the collapse is not malevolent (intending to harm us), but rather a passionate and compassionate bringing us back to finding our way.

And when we do find our way, I can assure you, we will look back in gratitude for what we would never have consciously dared to ask for. We will no longer envy our pets for being more connected to nature than we are. We will not be disconnected from each other or from the Divine in the way we have become now.

In the meantime, be kind with yourself and the pressure you are about to feel and are already feeling way more than most people let themselves feel. This is cooperating with the Divine in creation and in sometimes necessary destruction. Cooperation comes in the form of an invitation to connect with your daemon– your divine guide and guardian, who can offer humanity comfort and clarity during these troubled time in our evolution.

I feel this is our true reason for being here on the planet at this time. A time like no other.

Letting in what we really want

Published on by Raphael Awen1 Comment
By Wayne
Without realizing it, we configure life and relationships in such a way as to only get part of what we want, and to try to leave the rest of what we want off our radar.  Just enough to feel safe. Having more fulfillment than we are used to doesn’t feel safe at all. Drawing what we really and most deeply want in life is not the impossibility, or the matter of chance as we’ve made it out to be.
Drawing what we really want is difficult because it starts with letting ourselves have the want, admitting to ourselves and others that we are not happy with what we have, and seeing how we have played a huge role in setting up and maintaining the unfulfilling picture, and then taking steps towards what we really want. And then even though today is a continuation of yesterday in your life’s configuration and situation, you’ve changed direction, and you’ve changed the air quality, and you’ve changed the energy.

And those closest to you will likely not like it. If the friendship or relationship got it’s good start around an unspoken agreement to be a coping mechanism for the lack of fulfillment in your life, then the bond needs to hold to that in order to survive. Loyalty is often held up here as the greatest of all virtues.

I feel this consternation at times with Jillian. We both regularly reach out for more with each other. But we hit a wall inside of ourselves to let in what we discover. If Jillian finds more of herself and her fulfillment in life, how will that affect her desire towards me? If we find levels of fulfillment together that were before off our radar, how do we expect to maintain that? How do I expect to find that again if I were to lose Jillian? It pushes up a big performance piece for a man. If I held the space of passion and leadership, and did my part for this to arise, and it worked somehow, how do I expect to keep that happening? As a woman, she will probably let herself want that more than I am ready to as a man.

Sex is a really good place to see this vulnerability.  A man can dream of being with an attractive and sexual woman and all without feeling how he would never let himself truly have that as it would be crazy on many levels to be around.

Having more of what you really want is way more about letting it in, than finding it.

It starts with finding and getting to know the part of ourselves that resists letting in more.

The End of Emotional ‘Extend and Pretend’

Published on by Raphael Awen

By Wayne

We are in the middle of huge change.

Just what is going on? And at what pace is that happening? And, more so, how will it affect me and my family? What’s a sane amount of preparation? To what degree are we going to have to ‘just wing it’?

Many of us are managing our lives and facing these new challenges in such a way as to remain buoyant, to look on the bright side, and not to succumb to an anxiety that we feel around us and in us. We’re afraid of going into our anxiety, for fear it will swallow us. If not swallow us, it certainly would slow us down, affect our performance on our jobs, affect our relationships, etc. Our success is dependent on our positive bearings, we feel. While that strategy feels like it has worked in times past, it is actually setting you up for a much harder landing, given the pace of change we are facing. This is essentially the ‘Extend and Pretend’ approach of our political, economical, and spiritual leaders, as reflected in our mainstream media, that has held so much of our allegiance.

This ‘extend and pretend’ approach also applies to how you relate to your internal reality. The challenge comes with getting in touch with your emotional reactions and conversant with what you really feel, especially what we call the, ‘negative’ emotions of shame, anxiety, and depression. In my opinion, allowing yourself to feel these feelings is the single most important thing you can do to prepare yourself to be in a place of fitness to face these unfolding changes. Nothing it seems  in our current society supports this kind of awakening. But, your depression and your anxiety and your attempts at control are not what’s wrong with you. They are the path to being the most real you and the most alive you and the most contributing-to-the-world you that can be. If you can embrace them.

I feel a voice, the voice of my own heart calling out to me, and you:

If you sign on to your most alive path, then you are about to enter the most interesting and intense journey, the most well written plot and sub plotted story, the story of you. But you can’t know and experience it any other way than by living your way into it, on this planet, at this interesting and transitional time. You already have it. You don’t need to attain something, or overcome something, or escape you in order to enter this very true story.

Your only requirement is yielding to this story of you.

If you sign on, Life will soon bring your first choice embarking into this story. You won’t know where it is going to end up, you will only know clearly in this one choice what YOU really want. Oh, you will have a wrestling of what you ‘should’ do and anxiety about the possible outcome, but in your heart, you will know what is the path of your true and real story, the internal script or scrip-ture of your life, for this one choice at hand. It will take huge courage, no doubt, but not more than you currently have available to you.

Living in this story will become your new mode of living. It offers you no guarantee of what is coming financially, or what is coming regarding your career, or even your relationships. Chances are strong that most people are not resonant with or ready to join you in your new way of navigating life. It’s funny this new way is all about navigating, but nothing about controlling. You value the people in your life and the money and advantages you have, but you no longer live from the dead ground of basing life’s choices on protecting and preserving them, at the cost of your true story.

Life’s choices still come at you whether you sign on to this most authentic and magical journey of you or not; it’s just that the choice you make is often very different from what is considered safe or even sane.

As I write these words, my heart aches at the pain I’ve felt and the time and relationships it has taken for me to transition from an external scripture to an internal one. From an ‘extend and pretend’ mode of life to a real and authentic one. Arriving at adulthood, I attached myself so deeply to learning and living by the Christian Bible as the truth of all life, the meaning of all life, the guarantee that my living and breathing on this earth would come to the most meaningful outcome and the most reward, both in this life and the next if I lived out of and in allegiance to that truth. I see now that the challenge of following my own heart in the way and degree I describe above I was working towards, but not yet ready for. It was the most authentic journey of my life then. There was no possible other outcome it seemed. Until there was.

Actually, the story of you (as it was for me) is so difficult to let in, in fact, that most of our lives (and lifetimes) are spent in earlier domains while we gather the courage for the next step, the next true and authentic and totally natural step. And, none of this is wasted time or unnecessary pain as it all leads to growth.

There is such a deeper ground of living arising now, in the midst of global collapse, where the ‘extend and pretend’ modes of life are finally wrapping up. And we are all being invited to live an internal and external reality that is more in alignment with our authentic selves.

​Visit soulfullheart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart healing process.

Let Go Of Hidden Agendas: Move Towards What You Really Want

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

By Wayne

It’s not your or my agenda that’s the issue; it’s the hidden aspect of it that holds us back.

Certainly don’t kill your agenda: love it and bring it out into the open. Every time you find a hidden aspect of it, own it, share it, trans-parent-ize it and every step along the way will then lead further to more of what the world is waiting for.

Wholesome parents feel what their child is feeling before they can put words to it, often even before they consciously know what they are feeling. Relating to our hidden agenda as a loving parent, is to get trans-parent with ourselves and to discover what we hesitate to see in ourselves.

I’d like to give an example that many of us can relate to. An acquaintance or friend asks to go for coffee, begins the get together with light talk, sprinkles in a few questions and then it dawns on you, sure enough…. that they are trying to get you into their latest multi-level marketing scheme – Amway or equivalent – and they didn’t tell you beforehand or even hint that was the purpose meeting with you. They hid their agenda for fear that you would have turned them down had they told you the real purpose and intention of the meeting. You feel betrayed, and rightly so.

Most of us have become way too aware of hidden agendas for that to work anymore.

Tepid relationships, tepid leaders, tepid coffee…yuck. Get real, get passionate. Share with me what your agenda is. Tell me what I’m missing AND be open to and desirous of my honest response. You and I won’t come out the same.

We are all wanting, even under our despair, to live in passion, in what we really want. You can have what you really want. It is possible…and this isn’t a shallow positive thinking approach.

The huge change you desire that looks so different from your current life, so unreachable from where you are now, is possible….IF:

If you are willing to move one step at a time towards that goal. Own it, dust it off, love it. AND be willing to adjust that goal as you go.

If your honest goal is be a millionaire, which others may judge as shallow or selfish, or empty, you need to fully embrace that goal for YOUR reasons. Why else are you here for, except but for to have a real human experience and to share it with the world. Much good and fulfillment and happiness could come from you becoming a millionaire. If however, along the way to that goal, you discover say that what you really in fact wanted a feeling of security and love that money could not provide you, then be willing to make changes to your goal. To what you really want. The millionaire goal was your best picture of what you most deeply wanted. Now you have a revised goal.

If you find yourself impoverishing others in pursuing your goal of obtaining wealth, and discover that the wealth you are seeking in the way you are seeking it is not wealth at all, be open to seeing your hidden agenda, and what is underneath of it. What you really want, to feel secure and important, and even powerful is possible, but in a much more transparent way, a way that is far less stressful, and more in tune with love and nature.

The difficult part of having what you really want is not that you cannot make it magically happen, like you tell yourself it is. The difficult part is that life feels so different when you begin to let in what you really want. Did you get that? ‘Letting in’ rather than ‘making happen.’ In fact we use the picture of impossibility as an excuse to justify remaining in despair, when the deeper truth is that we are not willing or ready yet to let in the abundance and goodness and aliveness of our real desires and the transformation (real scary changes) that come along with our deepest purpose and desires.

And so back to my original point – hidden agendas show us where we are not fully aligned with our truest desires. Our true desires don’t have anything to hide or apologize for. A hidden agenda that becomes conscious to us simply shows us a fear factor that is wanting to get enough love to let go of, and ‘let in’ more of our real passion and reason for being here.