Category: By Raphael Awen

The Emotional Reasons Why Men Are Drawn To Porn: Sacred Masculine Blog Series

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By Raphael Awen

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He cannot relate to his own beauty, and neither can he relate to the beauty of the woman. To settle for looking at pictures of women’s awesome and naked beauty instead of having a personal and in the flesh experience of that beauty is like settling for pictures of nature, rather than experiencing the beauty of the forest, the ocean and the sunset.

I feel I’m downloading a bigger piece around the male attraction to porn.

Let me see if I can put some words around this that make sense and you tell me if this feels true for you or not.

For many, porn isn’t just an attraction, but a full on addiction with a ton of shame and self loathing.

Men are creatures of stunning beauty, and somewhere, deep inside, they know this. They know this, not consciously, but rather in the very fabric of their being. The universe doesn’t make any junk. This form of knowing lives in them despite everything else that says it isn’t so. The wounding, the self loathing, the deep core unworthiness that they carry in relation to what it means to be a man; none of it can diminish the actual and true beauty and power of what a man is in his essence.

But this beauty isn’t known and felt consciously or experientially. This incredible worth doesn’t colour their inner hearth of self-perception. Like an under-age heir to the throne, it’s theirs, but not yet.

To see yourself or any man as anything less than the grand beings they are is to perpetuate and contribute to this blocked access to true being. To call a man a pig because he paws over porn is to demean both the man and the pig.

Now this man, separated from his true worth and unable to embody it in life or relationships, is starved from the nourishment he was intended and created for. Outside of his own sovereign domain of worth, and unable to have a felt sense of his being, he turns to relate to women through this same separation from essence.

He cannot relate to his own beauty, and neither can he relate to the beauty of the woman. To settle for looking at pictures of women’s awesome and naked beauty instead of having a personal and in the flesh experience of that beauty is like settling for pictures of nature, rather than experiencing the beauty of the forest, the ocean and the sunset.

Both the woman and the man here in this settlement are utterly excluded from true and validating experience of beauty and sexuality. The porno-graph is a lousy substitute for the porno-experience.

The man is essentially using porn as an attempt to hold his relationship with his separation and banishment from true beauty.

It could be said that a man awakening to his sexuality could be served by a teen phase of porn, or a man needing to awaken his desire, but to settle for it, means something deep inside is disconnected and dying.

Like any addiction, now, porn becomes an attachment to replace a missing something. Any addiction is not a bad thing. It’s telling us something. We may not like it’s effects on our lives, but that doesn’t make it bad or wrong or evil. It’s something that is calling our attention.

Men are meant to function in connection with the greatness of their worth. Anything less than living from that ground stirs ache and frustration, all of which call him to something more. If a man is anything, he is a being in search of more.

Finding and living into that more is what life is about.

If you are in search of more and you feel I could serve you in finding your more, I’d like to hear from you. The work I offer is about discovering the parts of your being and what their needs are. As you get in touch with each of your parts, you come to know the part of you that holds your relationship to porn. Now, finally, the war with self can truly be over as you come to discover your true inner beauty.

Raphael Awen is co-creator, teacher, and facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Visit soulfullheartwayoflife.com for more information.

Life Isn´t Possible Without Death

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By Raphael Awen

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Our greatest fear isn’t about our death, but rather our infinitude. Death is simply another birth into the great unknown of our never ending being and the universe it expresses in. To accept that is to be in reverence, awe and wonder, which is to really live. To accept that is to accept your struggle with that. You don’t really ‘get’ that and neither do I.

Death and life are a great mystery that the universe itself and the divine itself is still busy exploring and it is exploring it through you and me.

Death and life are inseparable from each other, as every moment, every relationship, every being that expresses, expresses as a surrender to this mystery of death and rebirth.

Living our lives in avoidance of death or repulsion to death is to reject life itself, for life isn’t possible without death. Coming to terms with our physical death can help us come to terms with the many deaths of our lives, which in turn is the only thing that can offer us a healthy entry into our next stage and place in life.

You must leave in order to enter. We get to have life because we are willing to let it go. What makes any moment truly alive is to feel that moment’s life and its death in the same space. I enter it with a reverence that I must in turn leave it and its imprint on me as well as what I imprinted it with. Every thing and every relationship I enter, I must ultimately leave. Every Joy contains a sorrow.

If life is anything, it is reverence. To revere something is to fear it. To truly fear something is to be in awe of it, to respect it on a deep heart and soul level, is to fear losing it. What we really fear losing is not our lives, but losing the real connection with life within our life. Regaining that is about accepting all of our reality, even if we fall so short of understanding it. It’s about feeling it, not ‘knowing’ it in any mental or philosophical sense.

Finding and feeling the part(s) of you who hold your relationship to death and rebirth is the single deepest thing you can do to embrace growth, movement and change in your life. Parts of you are stuck in their relationship to death, and can only move from the fear that grips them if and when they are afforded a digestion of their fears.

SoulFullHeart is a path that specifically focuses on getting to know and feel parts of your self. It takes this reverential exploration of the unknown universe inward into the universe of you. If you feel a resonance that this is the reverence that life is calling you to, I’d like to offer what SoulFullHeart is my heart passion to engage with you. Our sessions page is here: http://www.soulfullheartwayoflife.com/sessions.

Raphael Awen is co-creator, teacher, and facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Visit soulfullheartwayoflife.com for more information.

Life Beyond The Veil

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By Raphael Awen

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At the edge of your life as you know it, there is a thin, but effective veil that contains you. Not all of you actually lives within the veil, but having awareness of this fact is largely prohibited by the veil itself. It’s as if life-as-you-know-it is all there is. For all but a select few, this pearl of great price will not be discovered in a given lifetime even though it sovereignly belongs to every single one of us.

The veil is like one of those space-age non-material kind of materials that can go invisible and can retract and expand as necessary in its containment function. The material lives not as some external boundary, but lives inside of you. It is held in place by every relationship agreement that you form with life, people and energy.

Try as you inevitably will, and desire as you will, this containment will not let up easily. It is designed to withstand even the most formidable of efforts. In fact, effort alone cannot penetrate it. It won’t let up until it knows that it knows, and you know that you know, and it knows you know, that you are truly ready to discover and go on to experience life beyond this veil. It lovingly begins with tastes and confirmations and many processes to make you fit for a life as you don’t know it and can only come to know by slow awakening.

Within the veil, you have become skilled at life as you know it. Your proficiency at the many work arounds parts of you employ to be living a part-life is truly a work of great attainment. It’s more than tempting to remain there. For most, even an inkling of a missing something is held at bay by the containment vessel. Your skill at life as you know it is dear to you. It’s made a half life safe and even rewarding. You’ve made a home away from home. What could be of any more value than that?

Life isn’t out to conspire against you. It doesn’t want to rob you of any treasured security. It actually wants to afford you a whole new relationship to security and a truer kind of safety that lives beyond the veil. But it waits as if there is all the time in the world, because in fact, it does have all the time in the world and is willing to spend that in your awakening process to life beyond the veil.

Life beyond the veil doesn’t promise to be easy or that there will not be other veils; that you will be somehow be done once and for all with veils and painful awakening processes. The unknown part of you that lives beyond the veil already knows this and is both urgent and patient in communicating with you. It knows you need all the time you need and that all of it is just as sacred as sacred can be.

When you are truly ready, you will repeatedly and consistently make many excursions beyond the current veil capping life as you know it. These excursions will be to confirm, further awaken and acclimatize you to deeper exposures to life beyond the veil.

If wonder, reverence, and awe is winning and possessing the day for you and nothing on this side of the veil can keep you from pressing through it, then you are already in process of moving through the veil. That’s why life as you know it feels so strange and familiar to you at the same time. You are in a profound birthing process.

I’ve been through a few of these ‘rending the veil’ life processes and I offer assistance to help people feel themselves more self-lovingly in order to be with themselves on their journey. I do that through presence, focus and dialogue together with someone and aspects of them when they are ready to claim that for themselves. It’s not an offer of friendship though I am known to be very friendly. You are not out seeking another friend. You are seeking (if you are) a space-holder who can assist you in holding your you-space through a profound soul and life transition. Why attempt it alone when you don’t have to?

I so welcome hearing from you and learning of your story. My sessions page is here if you’d like to know more. soulfullheartwayoflife.com/sessions

I honour your awakening beyond the veil…

Raphael Awen is co-creator, teacher, and facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Visit soulfullheartwayoflife.com for more information.

Moving Beyond Mediocre Manhood: Sacred Masculinity Blog Series

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By Raphael Awen

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Mediocre manhood. Those two words don’t really belong in the same sentence. Sadly though, we can’t escape the reality as it exists today…..or can we?

Escaping mediocre manhood will require awareness of how you are showing up as man, what isn’t working for you, the humility to admit it and the choice to seek something more.

How each of us as men have become the man we are has so much to do with the patterns of manhood that we were shown. These patterns were ingrained into us on so much more than a cognitive level going to the very heart of our being.

The word ‘pattern’ is from the same original word for the words; father; pater; papa and patriarch. Our father is literally our pattern, our ‘patron’ Saint, our admission into the ‘patriarchy’. Each of us as men is running a kind of emotional operating system that came to us via our fathers. Our father got it from his father, and so on and on. It may not be our father, or even a man in the role of our father, but all of us as men received intense male patterning and templating for every boy and man around us.

It is only as the contents of this,…let’s call it our EOS (emotional operating system) become conscious and brought up into our awareness, that we can even begin to move out of mediocrity in our manhood.

Here alone is a big step. Most men have a codependent relationship with all men and especially their fathers whereby they agree not to speak any ‘negativity’ towards their fathers. What this really is, is an agreement to keep the patriarchy intact from generation to generation. Only as you refuse to participate in the insanity will you find any ground to leave the insanity. This means you’re going to have get critical about dad and his pattern as it lives in you. I don’t know how else to say it. You don’t need to be a superiorizing asshole about it, but you can’t escape critique. Your critique will need to be vocal enough to exit the insanity. Being critical beyond that is just cycling in an enmeshed relationship men, dads, and male friends.

Unless you are willing to say no to every man, you can’t actually find your deepest version of your truest manhood. You may not need to say no to every man, but you will need to be willing to say no if your goal is your highest expression of your manhood. You don’t owe your dad a thing, and a healthy self realized dad doesn’t expect a thing in return for his role and years as a father. Actually, the greatest gift a dad can receive from their son is their ‘fuck you dad!’ of individuation, which ideally should come around 18 years old. Now, after this healthy completion of the childhood phase, dad and son can go on to forge a totally new relationship with the old one having truly died and been reborn.

Only now, after this death and rebirth, can new patterns be explored and come to be a part of a new EOS. This is the real initiation into manhood that is not only missing in our culture, but so missing from all of the manhood groups I have encountered this far.

Men want more. It’s in them at their very core. No amount of conditioning can erase that. Conditioning can and does try to manage and suppress this wanting of more which is in itself is a testimony to this essence in a man.

Exploring this ‘more’ will be finding and feeling and healing all the aspects of your EOS that no longer serve your most authentic version of yourself arising. The way this is done in SoulFullHeart is through getting to know the parts of you that makeup your ‘you’ stream. You are far from a single personality. This is probably no more evident than in relation to your masculinity. Our parts can and do respond very differently in different situations. You are not insane. You are multi-dimensional. You have more than one you, several more in fact.

Until you come to discover your parts or subpersonalities, some part of you is posing as you, working so much harder than is healthy to keep your ‘you’ show running uncontrollably on the mediocre default patterns that are in the male collective.

More about the SoulFullHeart Subpersonality Healing Process Here:http://www.soulfullheartwayoflife.com/soulfullheart-subpers…

Raphael Awen is co-creator, teacher, and facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Visit soulfullheartwayoflife.com for more information.

Venturing Into The Unknown: Sacred Masculine Blog Series

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By Raphael Awen

 

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So what is this thing out there called ‘the sacred masculine’ or, as it’s equally referred to, ‘the divine masculine’?

The sacred masculine, like the sacred feminine, isn’t easily defined or contained in words, because they are both an energy, a force, a wave form of a specific bandwidth of frequency. They are an awareness of something more than what is in your current consciousness around the masculine or the feminine. It’s a humble admission of ‘I know that I don’t know.’ Herein lies its qualification to be referred to as the divine, or sacred,….it’s in the humility to be in wonder, and to have a reverence for something more that you want, but don’t currently have.

The masculine, however, is by itself sacred. Masculinity itself doesn’t really need the words sacred or divine to designate it as anything more than it already is. In a profound way, two guys sharing beers in a bar, checking out women and watching football is a form of the masculine out seeking to know itself. Even Donald Trump’s recently much maligned words about women is a form of the masculine out trying to know itself. Admittedly, there isn’t any awareness or consciousness around wanting more, or anything touching on an expression of what we’d call the ‘reverent’ to be found here, but even in this unconsciousness, masculinity is out seeking to know itself.

Masculinity itself, like femininity, is the reverent thing. It can’t be made any more or less reverent than it already is. The only thing there is to change is your relationship to it. It’s the ground of your relationship to the thing, not the thing itself that either lets in or holds at bay the reverence factor. To feel this is the beginning of reverence. It’s the beginning of making space for the sacred inside of you.

What is it that you want in relationship to the masculine? What is it that you feel is lacking or missing in your relationship to the masculine? This wanting and willingness to admit a missing piece is what is the essence of your relationship to the masculine. It is making space for desire. It is making space for longing.

That’s just about all for the moment, except that I welcome working with you personally and directly in dedicated session space man to man if what I offer and the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life offers calls to you. Our sessions page is here: soulfullheartwayoflife.com/sessions

Stay tuned for more on the sacred masculine!

Raphael Awen is co-creator, facilitator and teacher of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Visit soulfullheartwayoflife.com for more information about healing sessions with Raphael.

The Epic Journey Is Inward Toward Self Love

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By Raphael Awen

The Beginning

If life is anything, it’s a journey. An exciting and epic journey.

But why doesn’t it feel that way so much of the time for so many of us?

It’s because parts of us have worked so hard to isolate us from the journey that life is, working to tame it and make it manageable, predictable and safe. These parts of us can’t remove us from the movements of birth, childhood, young adult and middle age and old age, but if they can just keep it the safest possible within these uncontrollables, they will gladly settle for that.

But, these aren’t the only parts of us. There are others longing for change and adventure, who feel like they are dying on the vine in the small carefully arranged life we’ve set up, that feels so set in stone.

Fused to these very different parts of us, we are managing a civil war inside of us, all the while seeking to remain functional on the outside and holding a self image intact to our world around us. A longing dream comes up to take a couple years and travel, and we end up settling for a 2 week all inclusive vacation paid for on a credit card. ‘How was it?’ our friends ask when we return, expecting nothing more than a polite answer to their polite question.

Why can’t we seem to access anything different? Well, if you are genuinely asking that question, you need to get ready, because you are beginning to access something different. If you are willing to hold that question as a quest, you will make conscious the journey that your life is.

Getting to know these very different parts inside of us and why they are disposed the way they are is an incredible journey in itself. It is in fact, the real journey. It is a journey that will require a journal for sure to digest and record the experience. This journey inward to deep self-love and self-reconciliation is the way of life that SoulFullHeart offers.

I’d like to take you to feeling one more piece today. You as a soul ARE a journey. You aren’t actually seeking a journey like you may think you are. You are on an epic journey right now. Even if part of you manages to keep you isolated and involved in as little change as possible for your entire life, you are still in and on this epic journey. If you are willing to feel this, that feeling space that you create and the intensity of feeling it will create in you the guidance you seek and need to feel, as to what path to take to undo the set-in-stone life you’ve set up for yourself so far.

The bigger context of life for all of us collectively is changing at lightning speeds in these recent years. People feeling this tend to either attempt hunkering down deeper into their set-in-stone approach, or they see that this tsunami of change must be flowed with. They make it a conscious feeling to feel all there is to feel around life change, desire and the internal unresolved conflicts coming from each of the beloved parts of themselves.

You don’t need to be in control. You don’t need a bullet proof plan. You don’t need another self-help program. You only need to be willing to feel.

I’d like to help you with that if that is something that calls deeply to you, if you know that feeling is the journey you are on. Hang around, get to know and reach out to us here in the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life.

Raphael Awen is co-creator, facilitator, and teacher of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Visit soulfullheartwayoflife.com for more information. 

It’s our relationship to Desire that matters, not suppressing it

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By Raphael Awen

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Possibly the single most difficult challenge in life is dealing with desire.

Think about it for a moment. Without desire, there wouldn’t be such things as addictions, no need for medications or drugs of any kind. No need for anything really. Sex, food, a new iphone, you name it, all of it no longer sought after. There wouldn’t be any conflict, as that’s all based on desire, so there’s the whole ‘world peace’ issue solved. No more internal conflicts either, so no more need for any spiritual teachers like myself offering ‘more’ in some form or another. There wouldn’t be any possibility of being taken advantage of, nor sold anything, because all that too begins and ends with desire.

What comes up for many of us in feeling this burden of desire that we carry is a desire to return to the place of no desire, to return to source. We can feel a realm of bliss and contentment where we were free from the tyranny of desire. But, to enter this place, we feel a desire to unburden ourselves of this seeming plague of desire that overwhelms us. Did you get that? Desire to exit desire? Argh! Give it an inch and it takes a mile.

The other day, in the evening, I walked down the hill to the beach seawall and stopped in for some ice-cream. It was chocolate mint with crunchy chocolate chunks in it. It tasted out of this world. I knew it was a sugar bomb and of no food value whatsoever, but it was just too good and too satisfying to say no too. Then, the next evening, the idea came back again, and guess what? More chocolate mint. That night at around 3 am, there was a sugar bomb explosion that gave me a headache. Now the chocolate mint wasn’t so much my friend anymore. Lesson learned right? Well, actually, no, because the idea came back around on the third night in a row and guess what? MORE Chocolate Mint, and yet another early morning hangover. Talk about addicted, I couldn’t even try a different flavour.

So, what’s the solution? The idea of some ‘self control’ comes up first with a bit of a punishing energy. “Once in a blue moon as a treat, is fine, but….”. But this too is the voice of another desire, desire wanting to control desire.

When you stop to feel through it, there isn’t a single problem that you have in any area that can’t be traced back directly to the issue of desire.

So, let’s leave this plagued world of desire then, right? To hell with desire. Let’s kill off all desire. What’s left could only be total bliss.

But we’d have to exit nature for sure, because even trees have desire. We’d have to shed the body, because it too is a demon of desire, food, sex, nikes and all. And then what we’re left with is being disembodied spirits who live in the bliss of escape from the pain of all desire. If this is true, then suicide is the greatest virtue.

But, think a bit further here. The question comes up if I would really be free of all desire after death. If I’m still existing, but outside of the body, I won’t be at the ice-cream shop any time soon, but wouldn’t I still be in some realm of desire?

It feels to me like the oneness source that we were birthed out of, the one that we can feel a longing to return to, is actually an energy of discontentment within its contentment. If God, or oneness, or non-duality was so blissfully fulfilled (filled to the full), why did it create outside of itself, beings who would be dependent upon desire?

The answer I can feel around this one and humbly offer as a ‘near as I can tell’ is that God had desire. I know that sounds blasphemous to our conditioned minds, but God wasn’t filled to the full. And God isn’t filled to the full. And God is out ‘godding’ around through you and me in this utter cacophony of desire that has been unleashed upon us.

Why?

Because God in its utter and total fulfillment, felt a need to step outside of itself, which it actually can’t do, but decided to try anyway and provide the illusion of separation from God as a learning and discovery ground seeking to come to know more of its infinite nature.

God is in the 18 year old out trying to get laid. God was in my ice-cream binge. God is in my desire to write this morning. God is in you as you read this.

Here’s the secret though. The separation you feel between you and God isn’t real. It just needed to feel real enough for the experiment to work. What happens to infinite love when it ventures outside of itself, when it lets itself feel the wanting of something more than the most it already has?

We don’t actually know and neither does God, but desire was again found utterly unstoppable here. God couldn’t self discipline itself to stay inside of any kind of safe boundaries. Love left itself up to love. If love is anything, it is free of control. “But, how can that work” we all ask, including the part of me afraid of my next ice-cream binge?

How about this as a solution? What if instead of killing desire, what I actually need is to go deeper into desire? What is it that I really want? What did the ice cream represent that it was capable of representing but not fulfilling? It takes as many ice-cream binges as it takes to figure this out, and love itself can hold every one of them. Even self destruction is held in love, because every destruction cannot escape the love that you are and that you never ever actually left.

Bingo!

To kill desire, you’d have to kill God.The word for this is ‘deicide.’ That’s why suicide is so offensive, it’s actually deicide and suppressing desire is actually fighting God.

You can embrace the utter contentment that you are and bask in its fullness, just don’t think that you won’t have desires inside of that. It’s a crazy thing, but there isn’t any fulfillment in fulfillment in an infinite world. ‘Full’ isn’t ultimately real, only ‘full for now’ is real.

Love wants to explore through you and it can also feel you in this burden it thrust upon you of offloading it’s very desire nature into you. Like a crack addicted mother passing off its craving into an unborn fetus, it can be seen as a tragedy, or it can be seen as love itself being utterly and uncontrollably addicted to love.

We are in a love experiment. Nothing more or less. Even hatred is contained by love.

In SoulFullHeart, we offer a way to get to know and explore the many parts of ourselves or subpersonalities. Here is where your overall relationship to desire can be felt through. Here, we can begin to differentiate each part of us and their relationship to desire. Without this, we remain fused to this civil war of desire inside of us. Check out SoulFullHeartwayoflife.com for more.

Raphael Awen is co-creator, teacher, and facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Visit soulfullheartwayoflife.com for more information and Raphael’s facebook page for more writing. 

 

Coming To Terms With Our Light And Our Dark

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By Raphael Awen

Coming to terms with the fact that I am both light and dark may be the single most growthful thing for me this life.

Like the cruise ship that I just watched enter the bay in the predawn light, I just discovered something of monumental proportions about my life.

I’ve always had a love for God, a desire to be in awe, and in reverence. This is something known about myself and that others around me can attest to. It’s part of my light.

But in a recent flow of tension and feeling into it, I felt into an aspect of a part of me feeling entitled to have and know power. The 30 year long career I left 2 years ago was a lot about having a sense of power in the face of life’s powerlessness and indefinability. While most wouldn’t call me materialistic, there was something about the things that money could buy that afforded me (and still do) a way to assuage this pain of powerlessness. Feeling deeper into this need for power hidden in my shadow, I find something very different to the reverence for God that I’ve always known in my light. Underneath the entitlement and need for power is actually an impulse to dethrone God.

Surrender to a higher or greater power leaves part of me in some ‘lesser than’ place struggling to see it as any more than that. So where else would I, or part of me, place this competition with God, but to hide it in my shadow.

What a pretzel! To have both love and hate for God in the same vessel, to revere God on one hand and to need to dethrone God on the other.

The more I come to know (also a kind of quest for power), the more I must surrender to that I don’t know.

It feels to me like the Divine itself is learning the same lessons I am learning. It too has darkness and light. None of it is bad. All of it is a quest to feel, heal, learn and grow in the only true reality there is of infinite love.

Raphael Awen is co-creator, teacher, and facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Visit soulfullheartwayoflife.com for more information. 

Premise 21: Perfect Makes Practice!

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By Raphael Awen

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Welcome to the LAST day of this 21 day SoulFullHeart Magical Mystery Premises Tour.

I’m hoping all the mystery and magic of this tour opens out in a big way for you and I together in this last day together, like a grand finale of heart and soul fireworks somehow.

Today we explore the Processes and Practices Premise.

It goes like this:

“It is important to engage in regular (ideally every day) practices and processes to awaken your SoulFullHeart Self, including creative visualization meditation, journaling and verbal dialogue with your parts, sessions with your SoulFullHeart Facilitator, and chakra cleansing.”

But, you may well object, practice isn’t always fun or one’s first choice of things to engage in. I get that. We tend to have a big should and discipline energy around anything calling for practice. I’d like to see if we can begin to turn that around for you with this final tour day together in these words.

We’ve all heard the saying that ‘Practice makes perfect.’ I’d like to offer you a revision, or as we like to call it, a ‘reframe’, on that to ‘Perfect makes practice.’

You see, in your deepest essence, you are already right now as perfect as you ever will be. You can’t actually become anymore of the anythings that you desire spiritually. You were born out of perfection into perfection, as a soul, as a body, as a spirit, as a human. You can actually feel this frequency of your own perfection if you tune it in (and here comes the practice part) and practice it a bit.

You see, you can only practice what you are. You cannot practice to become. Practicing to become leaves you deflated and in a self-reliant limited picture.

Here’s an example. I’ve lived in Mexico for the last 2 years and have picked up just enough Spanish to transact the essentials. I’m no where’s close to conversational. In fact, a complete Spanish sentence trips me up, whether I’m hearing it or trying to patch it together to speak it. But the Spanish I speak, I speak with reverence and heart. When I transact words and meaning with the locals, there is a different frequency to it than the deadened use of language that all native speakers of any language tend to exude, where the miracle of linguistics languishes. So, in one way, I’m totally stumbling along, but in another way, because of my need, my open heart, and childlike willingness to be childlike; love transacts. So, I say, proudly, that I speak Spanish ‘muy bonita’ – very beautifully. But I’ve dropped off from doing much Spanish lessons, so how can this be seen as any kind of advocacy for practice?

My reverence for the Spanish language and willingness to be in child’s mind around language and letting life bring it to me on what many would call a snail’s pace is actually a surrender to not trying to ‘conquer’ the language. Anything conquered is by definition deadened, tamed, and stripped of its wild essence. I don’t want to speak Español muerte – dead Spanish. I want to speak Español viviendo – living Spanish! I’m actually working on relearning how to speak alive English. I want reverence and awe over a mental fluency where heart is diminished. My deeper practice is this reverence.

Let’s take this a step further. Perfect Spanish already exists. It’s a linguistic miracle born of indescribable creative life forces that is still being wave formed (tongue wagged) out into existence. I’m a part of that perfection life force that created Spanish for god’s sake! Not only am I a part of that, I AM that perfection. I cannot be separated from the creative life force of all living things….nada. So, then, I AM this perfected (and ever being perfected) Spanish out learning how to put 5 Spanish words together.

Both are true!

I AM all attainment that is out attaining. I AM all learning that is out learning. I AM all fire that is out seeking to consume and be consumed. I AM all Love that is out yearning for love.

That is practice. That is process. It is thee most stunningly alive way to live. Anything short of it isn’t actually living, as life itself is out learning. I practice what I am. I don’t practice to become. I do practice however to deepen my experience.

And it’s never over. The practice never ends. If Mozart stopped practicing, what would we know of him today? My sense is, is that if we could interview him today, he’d say he fell way short of ‘knowing’ music. The more one practices, the more one sees what there is more to know or learn.

So, how does this tie into SoulFullHeart? SoulFullHeart is a particular and ever expanding bandwidth frequency being generated, anchored and offered by a handful of people who are pretty much intoxicated with it. We’ve identified the practices and processes that are mentioned in this premise that are seen as key portals into this frequency that we are really keen on expanding. You can read more about them on our website at soulfullheartwayoflife.com.

If this resonates for you, I invite you deeply to hang around, and when and if you’re ready, to contact us about next steps. It is a way of life we are offering and not a therapy. So on one hand, some deep thought and feeling are in order, and on the other, you can also jump in and give it a try. There’s no signing your life away here, but simply engaging more and more as it self-verifies for you. Again, our sessions page is here:http://www.soulfullheartwayoflife.com/sessions

Thank you so much to every single one of you who took in this 21 day premises tour to whatever degree that you did. I feel like you are a spaceholder for this arising simply by having digested these premises into your heart. Again, thank you!

You can find all of my 21 days here: https://soulfullheartblog.com/categ…/soulfullheart-premises/

I’d love to hear about your digestions and unfolding interest and any questions too.

Heart hugs to you….

Raphael Awen is teacher, co-creator, and facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Visit soulfullheartwayoflife.com for more information.

Premise 18: Communal Living In SoulFullHeart Community Offers Deepest Path To SoulFullHeartenment

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

By Raphael Awen

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Well, today’s premise writing should prove engaging, for many it will be controversial, but for you, I hope it makes your heart dance. Welcome to day 18 of the 21 day SoulFullHeart Magical Mystery Premises Tour.

The premise is called the ‘SoulFullHeart Community Premise’ and it goes this:

“SoulFullHeart communal living arrangements at a sustainable sanctuary offer the deepest path of SoulFullHeartenment.”

Our western and industrialized societies are so marked by a deep isolation and anonymity, and loneliness. There is little ground to be authentic or to practice authenticity in such a separated society. We feel we don’t matter and for good reason, in many ways, we don’t. Social media wars in comment boxes are a good evidence of this deep angst in our modern way of life. We’ll even take quarrelling as a means of connection. In our current technological society we have more means to connect than we’ve ever had, yet meaningful connection feels to be in the shortest supply it’s ever been in.

But on the other hand, most of us are not drawn, consciously at least, to something that we would call a ‘communal living arrangement’ either. So, what might this be about?

SoulFullHeart offers that since it was in our first experience of communal living arrangements, namely the family, or whatever semblance thereof, where our wounding occurred, it makes a ton of sense that parts of us would work hard to never again get in a situation so vulnerable and so painful. With these wounds left gaping and unhealed, any kind of personal relationship becomes too big of a challenge to find true intimacy in. We again settle for crumbs and call that enough.

But as we get to know, feel, and heal the parts of ourselves that were wounded deeply in our family of origin dynamics, we find that we can’t heal in isolation. Our wounds didn’t occur in isolation and our healing doesn’t either. We actually find that we need relationship as well as want deep relationship and meaningful connections as expressions of deepening self love.

SoulFullHeart goes further than just highlighting the need for meaningful connections to advocate for a communal living arrangement of sharing life together. Without a communal living arrangement, we are simply left too isolated and separated to find the healing ground we need for the deeper processes of the SoulFullHeart healing path. How that communal living arrangement looks and feels is an ongoing discovery as well an ongoing experiment that changes as more people are drawn.

Currently, we are four of us living in a single residence in Puerto Vallarta. The single residence part of it is more about what our budget can afford. Much more ideally, we see separate living spaces for people and couples with shared meals and projects in a communal space, and this will, of course, become necessary as we grow and more people are drawn to join us.

A distinct piece for us with the four us though has been living from a single pot of money. That is probably the biggest challenge as well as the greatest gift to our healing journey to work out all the rigours that this entails emotionally. For me personally, this is an amazing time as primary income for our living expenses have come from Leena Colibri‘s and Sequoia Heartman‘s on line work teaching English as well as Jelelle Awen‘s SoulFullHeart facilitation sessions. I’m having a time of letting in being supported by others to pursue what is my deeper calling as a SoulFullHeart teacher after letting go of a career and livelihood in Canada. Somehow, we feel that until a community can share money, some bedrock of community hasn’t quite formed.

There are others beyond the four of us that we are currently serving through sessions who if they choose to continue in the SoulFullHeart healing path, we see and hope for them to be naturally being drawn to community living. We feel the desire for community is something actually native to all humanity, even as we work our separation issues and necessary individuation healing growth as well.

Then, we see that a sustainable sanctuary is what we feel to keep our hearts set on. Two years ago, the four of us purchased a plot on an off grid ranch in Mexico where we lived for 18 months, busy with gardening and natural building until just 11 weeks ago. With Leena and Sequoia leaving a bit earlier than that as they drew English teaching jobs online. Our needs for money to live on and a call to serve SoulFullHeart’s unfolding drew us back to living for now in the city. But our vision remains clear for a sustainable sanctuary. We see our present industrial society as going through a slow collapse and are ready to make sudden changes as needed.

It’s so interesting to feel deep changes in the core of what we feel life is about, what a community is, how healing occurs, and all of that timed with the demise of industrial society. This should make for a awesome ride if we can open our hearts, dare to want what we want, and hold a space for it to arise.

That sacred space and that sacred something we want from it we call ‘SoulFullHeartenment’. It’s a term we made up obviously and so is the essence of it. It’s something different than awakening or enlightenment and something different than a therapy or healing modality, so we took the liberty to make up a new word for the thing we took the liberty of creating! Or maybe with a bit more humility, we could say that we felt the Divine wants to create through us.

But then, the Divine isn’t distinct from us in another way, so we’re back to something that looks like surrender, yet without abdication of desire and embodiment. We are all called I feel to live out our dreams and desires fully, not suppress them in the name of any misguided spirituality. For us, that’s about a communal living arrangement.

You can read more about what SoulFullHeartenment is about as I discussed it early on in another premise here: https://soulfullheartblog.com/…/premise-2-mature-the-ego-a…/

This is a big deal, isn’t it? Many people we share about SoulFullHeart with of course ask us what is it with our ‘community living thing’ with some noticeable reservation. We understand where that’s coming from as we’ve wrestled with our own conflicts together as well as needs for individual space and autonomy.

If this rings bells and sets off an orchestra inside you, I’d like to, and we’d like to, get on with building just that together. The doorway in though isn’t socializing. It’s more about learning a new way of being truly social and we offer that through sessions in person or over Skype as we seek to integrate more and more towards this picture of community. Our sessions info is here…..http://www.soulfullheartwayoflife.com/sessions

Thanks again for your interest and curiosity.

Raphael Awen is co-creator, teacher, and facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Please visit soulfullheartwayoflife.com for more information.