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Who You Are And What You Are Is Not A Question: Golden Earth Tales

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(This is Part Ten of the ongoing blog series: Golden Earth Tales.)

By Raphael Awen

Who you are and what you are is not a question. A question is something by definition that you seek an answer for and when that question is answered, the quest is over.

Who you are and what you are is part of the great unknown. Who you are and what you are cannot ever be known.

You are so much more, so vastly much more than you ever dreamed of. In fact, most all of your dreams and imaginings so far have been about trying to manage this ferocity of your being. So too, have been your relationships and occupations.

You have pulled most everything about you into your orbit in hopes of, on one hand, obtaining a clearer picture of who you are and, on the other hand, needing to dim the piercing light of who and what you are.

Your greatness has no measure. You are forever a part of the great unknowable.

What quest remains, it is not the quest to know, but instead the quest to be.

Raphael Awen hails from SoulFullHeart Sanctuary. You can also track him on twitter via @raphaelawen, or on facebook: ­­­­­­­facebook.com/raphaelawen1. Please visit our Patreon Page if you’d like to support SoulFullHeart Sanctuary. We’d love to receive some of your money!

Consciousness And ‘Single Personality Disorder’: Golden Earth Tales

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

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Please visit our Patreon Page if you’d like to support SoulFullHeart Sanctuary. We’d love to receive your support!

(This is Part Nine of the ongoing blog series: Golden Earth Tales.)

By Raphael Awen

I hope you’ve been enjoying this series and that it has been tweaking your feelings and your awareness on different levels and in different ways.

We’ve covered together how who and what ‘you’ perceive ‘yourself’ to be is but a fraction of who and what you really are as a human being, as a person, as a self. We looked together at how the self, both in its essence and its expression, is something closer to Infinite Love. We may be limited in our use of linguistics to describe this reality, but our ‘Arising Isness,’ as we called it, is powerfully unlimited.

We stretched our consciousness together in the previous eight blogs to get a feeling tone of what we are speaking about. I encourage you to take in each of those prior blogs with an open and desirous heart before taking in this one, as we are going to take this to a new level today that I hope blows your mind.

But first, a little lead-in…

You are awareness. You are consciousness. You are not your body. You are not your emotions. You are not your mind. You have a mind. You have emotions and you have a body. What holds body, mind and emotion in containment is consciousness.

You may be new to this idea that you are an awake and aware consciousness, and you may not readily see yourself as a consciousness. I would say then that you are less conscious of being a consciousness. Your consciousness is not then a big part of your waking awareness. If this is true, then you have more of a ‘density’ and less of a ‘porosity’ in your aware sense of self. This density then is an energetic block or filter to you having deepening and growing self-awareness.

Everything I’ve said so far today I don’t think would be too different from so many spiritual practices that are out there today. I may be using unfamiliar words, but the energy is the same. Even Christianity, as I practiced it for most of my life, was about expanding my sense and experience of self into a place of being ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’ that was meant to color my life. Also imperative in Christianity was holding an identity of ‘who I am in Christ’ as an elevation of consciousness. Daily devotional practice of prayer and meditation in the scripture was intended to induce an inner change of self-awareness.

Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism alike all offer something similar in that they want to raise your consciousness to something they deem as some kind of a higher plane. This blog series is no different in that sense. Soulfullheart is also no different in that sense in that it too seeks to raise consciousness to something different from the more common or status quo.

I’d like to make a grand deviation today from this common denominator of all spiritual practice. I’d like to offer you something truly new and different from every spiritual path that I’m aware of. I believe this has the power to truly rock your world in a profound sense.

That is of course, if you’re up for it. Please open your heart, feel your desire, fasten your seatbelt and come with me for a ride. Come fully and then decide what your truth is. Here’s the ride:

All spiritual practice is greatly limited by a self-perception of oneself being a single personality. Of course the ‘you’ that considers itself a single personality is a single personality, but that is because this is in fact only a single part of you doing your life as you. ‘You’ have in effect been hijacked by a part of you and you don’t even know it.

You are in fact a ‘multiple personality’ within a larger conscious awareness. What you call ‘you’ is in fact a whole family of personalities, sharing a body and a mind. I hope this isn’t such a stretch for you to see, because it really feels like a ‘no, duh’ to me.. ‘how could we have missed this huge piece?’

Like any family, there is inside of you a huge range of being what we call functional or dysfunctional depending on the long list of family dynamics at play. Power plays, shutdowns, pleaser roles, etc., with all of these coming from distinct parts or subpersonalities of yourself, to make up what you have just called ‘you’ up till now.

We’ve been told that being a ‘multiple personality’ is a disorder that one needs to seek therapy for. I’m telling you that the true disorder is rather a perception of being a ‘single personality’. The ‘you’ that leads most people’s lives and does everything from their spiritual seeking to their careers and their relationships is only one part of them, or one part of them in a strategic alliance with another part to give it its functionality or dysfunctionality. This is the part of them that is running their life and doing their life. It is primarily a part of you that is reading this series, evaluating it, and deciding if this new idea I’m offering today is for ‘you’ or not.

A part of you may be having a big reaction to my line of reasoning today. I’m writing provocatively to press this part of you and its distinct reaction into your awareness in an attempt to make my point.

Could this really be? Could it be that you are not anywhere close to the integrated being that you imagined yourself to be? If this is true, it really explains so much. It takes huge pressure off of yourself. It also puts a new and healthy pressure on you to discover who you really are.

Up till now, you see, with this perception of yourself being a single personality, there is only this poorly equipped primary part of you holding your ‘you show.’ You are in fact a whole cast of characters seeking to get their needs met and adapting in a host of ways and means inside of you – all the while only under the care of this primary part of you. It’s like a teenager barely old enough and responsible enough to babysit has been charged with doing life.

What I want to impress upon you today is that a profound change occurs when you let in this self-perception that I am offering you. Then it changes again another huge degree when a new and deeper sense of self can arise as a healthy parent to these parts of you. This is nothing less than a tsunami of change to let into your life, and some careful consideration is called for.

If you wish to go on doing your life as you’ve known and perceived yourself to be as a single and unified self, you of course have most of current consciousness to support you in that choice. I personally would not trade what I have discovered in coming to know myself as a tapestry of parts for anything, especially not for alignment with a deeply suffering and struggling collective consciousness.

In this blog series, we’ve looked at ‘you’ as being an individual or an ‘in-divi-dual.’ In that, we saw that a human being is this paradoxical ‘duality that can’t be divided.’ The duality we are talking about is on one hand a ‘singleness’ of being and on the other hand an ‘allness’ of being that can’t be singled out. This whole range of being is like a cosmic projection of the Infinite Love that is the essence of all life – projecting itself onto a screen where you show up as a you. If any of this sounds confusing, that’s because it is confusing! We don’t at the best of times have much of a clue as to what and who we are. We settle for measly roles and identities to make up for this unbearable wonder of being that we are. This blog series has been an attempt so far to expand out your sense of self into the cosmic realities we’ve dove into together.

Where I want to take you in today’s blog is to feel into that who you feel yourself to be in this cosmic sense is very different from who you feel yourself to be in an everyday sense. Embracing the cosmic Nondual, as it is called, into your waking reality is a challenge that most people seeking it become very focused on and dedicated to. I’m saying that the reasons behind your interest (or disinterest), focus and struggle have to do with this entire undiscovered world of you being a tapestry of parts, rather than the single personality that has been running your you show up till now.

There’s this magical and expanded sense of self that extends into and includes no less than all of life and the universe. Then I am offering that the single you, the you that differs from me, is in fact an entire another wild ride of discovery into yourself as being so much more again than you imagined.

So, how does this ride land in you, or part of you rather? Does part of you feel ready to let go of doing your ‘you show’ the way he or she has? Is part of you ready for a new you to show up that hasn’t been around up till now?

‘Part of me’ so enjoyed sharing its passion with you today. ‘I’ enjoyed feeling this part of me express its passion.

I invite you and your parts to read more about parts of yourself, in an article Jelayan and I wrote in an article here.

Raphael Awen hails from SoulFullHeart Sanctuary. You can also track him on twitter via @raphaelawen, or on facebook: ­­­­­­­facebook.com/raphaelawen1. Please visit our Patreon Page if you’d like to support SoulFullHeart Sanctuary. We’d love to receive some of your money!

‘I seek, therefore I am’: Golden Earth Tales

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

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Please visit our Patreon Page if you’d like to support SoulFullHeart Sanctuary. We’d love to receive your support!

(This is Part Eight of the ongoing blog series: Golden Earth Tales.)

By Raphael Awen

Who are you, dear reader of this blog? What brings you here? I hope I am not being too forward with asking such pointed questions. Let me back up.

First, I want to thank you for being here.

Thank you for being here.

You are here with your being.

Your being, I venture to say, is seeking something. You would not be here (or anywhere else online for that matter) if you were not seeking something.

Seeking something is what makes you a you.

You may be someone who stumbled on this blog series or seen it mentioned somewhere. I welcome you here.

You may be an old friend coming to check out what I am doing, or a family member who misses me since we left off contact. I welcome you here. I miss you too. Our curiosity about each other and missing of each other evidences that we are unified in our need and desire for something. We may have parted over a debate over what particular something is worthy of seeking, but we are joined back together in the realization that we share a deep and profound commonality in that we seek.

You may be someone who feels sharply in disagreement about my life choices or what Soulfullheart is about and you’re here seeking to confirm those suspicions. I welcome you here as well, fellow seeker.

That we are all in search of something is a reality so deep that we are willing to separate over what we seek in order to insure that our freedom to seek, and to seek as we choose, be held intact.

‘I seek, therefore I am’, is our shared humanity.

I have a growing awareness that who and what you and I are is so much more than what we have even hardly begun to discover. What we call, ‘The Self’ is so vast that even our disagreements and differences are a necessary part of our journey of discovery.

I also deeply feel that this quest to know will never be fully realized because who and what we are is an infinitely expanding reality. We can grow in our acceptance of the wonder about what we are, but we will never arrive at any destination of fully knowing ourselves. We’ll have to settle for more instead of all.

As you read these words, can you feel an awakening in you of an expansive feeling of your own bigness? The feeling that you are so much bigger than you have ever realized about yourself is a challenging feeling to let in.

Your current experience of life is but a fraction of what there is to experience, and this will remain true for the rest of your life.

This points to the reason most of us fill our lives with so much busyness and distraction. Underneath the busyness is an unfelt and disturbing feeling of ‘I don’t know who I am.’ When that feeling is made conscious as well as accepted to be a beautiful part of your humanity, it changes so much about how life looks and feels to you.

Your seeking to know yourself is but a part of the universe’s search to know itself.

The love that you seek is but a part of the love that you are.

The life you seek is but a part of the life that you are.

I am one with you in that experience. I am one with you in this essence.

Here is where we are utterly inseparable.

Here, between you, me, and whatever we call the Divine, there is no ‘other’.

We are all One.

Raphael Awen hails from SoulFullHeart Sanctuary. You can also track him on twitter via @raphaelawen, or on facebook: facebook.com/raphaelawen1. Please visit our Patreon Page if you’d like to support SoulFullHeart Sanctuary. We’d love to receive some of your money!

Realizing Reality Together: Golden Earth Tales

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

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Please visit our Patreon Page if you’d like to support SoulFullHeart Sanctuary. We’d love to receive some of your money!

(This is Part Seven of the ongoing blog series: Golden Earth Tales.)

By Raphael Awen

Thank you for joining in on this blog series. I’m really glad to have your involvement.

I have this expanding sense humming through me today of what a human being actually is. I could say more accurately is that I really don’t know what a human being is. And as I accept that into my consciousness, I let in arising wonder. This sense of wonder and childlike curiosity extends to me, you, and even to the Christian couple who this past week accused me of being ‘a cult leader who talks to demons’.

Friend, foe, or in between, we are all part of the human cult and we are all in search of something. We affect each other and we are an intertwined part of each other way more than we realize.

I’ve also had a growing sense of some other ‘participants’ in this blog series from another dimension called Golden Earth. It’s actually what got this blog series launched and I wrote about it in part one. I don’t have any five-physical-sense ‘proof’ of its existence, but I have been afforded the self-permission to imagine it being ‘real.’ I ‘see’ and ‘feel’ through my imagination the active interest of a group of students that like hanging out together in the Golden Earth café and are keenly interested in brainstorming together around what I’ve been putting out in this blog series.

Of course, this all sounds like a science fiction story, and I can say that maybe that is in fact what all this imagination is – a story from beyond our normal scope of perception. What’s crazy though for me (in a good kind of crazy way) is that I get this growing sense that what you and I call ‘real’ and verify as everyday normal reality through our five physical sense perception of reality, doesn’t sound that far off from my ‘Golden Earth’ reality. My sense is that the reality that you and I participate in as ‘real’ is only real because you and I have in fact ‘realized’ it together. We made it up. We made it up in our own personal ‘fact-ory’. And then to top it off, we agreed that it was real. What a bunch of conspirators we are! I guess I am a powerful cult leader after all….wow…. and so are you …. like it or not. We make stuff up as we go.

If any of this stuff is a more accurate picture of the underlying reality that undergirds what we call reality, then at the very least, it puts us back in a place of childlike wonder. That childlike wonder opens out all the edges of what I consider real and true. This lens of childlike wonder filters and swirls through my adult mind and leaves me with a, ‘Holy shit, who the hell are we?’ feeling. ‘Holy’ and ‘hell’ are now in the same sentence somehow.

I mentioned the couple who called me ‘a cult leader who listens to demons’ as I’m still digesting this week the energy of our all-too-real confrontation. While my personal boundary is that no one gets to be a part of my life while they want to energize their reality in an intolerant way towards me, there is another way that none of us can escape anyone else. As we’ve been feeling into in this series: we, at a deep and fundamental level of reality, are all One. We cannot even differentiate enough from that Oneness for there to be an ‘other’ to have a difference with, let alone fight with them.

My mind starts to ride out on some of these feeling waves and mind waves, like a great surfboard ride, and it comes up with more and more profound questions. It’s hard staying on one train of thought for very long. It isn’t too far off from getting stoned really. But before you judge that as a bad thing, consider that what you call ‘reality’ may be, in fact, coming from the completely intoxicated and drug-impaired perception of what you and I just made up and declared real. Hell, you’re not the safe designated driver to get me home safely that you imagine yourself to be. Nor is the Christian couple offering me their Jesus picture of deliverance and salvation. I may not even be safe to drive myself home! I just may need to walk, or stumble, or just pass out on the sidewalk and try again tomorrow, thank you very much!

I love this madness!

I can feel the students at the Golden Earth café really rocking about now, so excited to feel us feeling into this together. If we can soften our perception of reality back to a place of childlike wonder, then they and we get to come out and play. I see the universe knocking on the door of my childhood home – “Hello, Mrs. Awen. Can Raphael come out and play today?”

When and how in the heaven and in the hell did we lose our sense of play? When and how did we make spirituality about being right or being saved or delivered?

The good news is that we fell and bumped our head and are suffering a bit of amnesia. We only fell from the grace of knowing who and what we are. We didn’t fall and bump ourselves out of god’s grace, as the Christian narrative goes. That story has held a good many of us (myself deeply included) for a good long time, and it’s running out of gas. New stories are now vying for our attention.

My truth is that you and I don’t have but the tiniest bit of what there is to be had as far as your sense of self extends. You are so much more than you ever dreamed yourself to be. We live in an Infinite-Love reality that is ever expanding, and so everything we come to treasure as meaningful or real only gets its value because it calls us to get comfortable with deepening our picture of reality.

With this blog series, I’m realizing I don’t have anything to sell you on. Well, to be honest, I’ve been putting out there my own ideas of reality and I guess making a case for that. But, in another way, I get to admit that I don’t know what I’m doing or what I’m selling. That, I feel, is what has earned me the title this week of being a powerful cult leader – I am in the great unknown and dangerously having some fun and dangerously enticing others to join me, and what this couple could see and verify for me is that I just might succeed in pulling that off – God forbid, hallelujah and praise Allah!

Reality is being auctioned off to the highest bidder. What do you have to bid for this treasure? What kind of reality do you dream of? What do you want? Deep down in the depths of your being? What makes you tick? What’s your wanter wanting underneath its wants? Are you angry that what you’ve subscribed to hasn’t paid off? I’m glad if you’re pissed. Get pissed at me if you need to. I’ll throw it back in your face and we can be a part of changing consciousness together.

As I said in my last blog, we as a species are at an epochal shift in our consciousness and existence. It is the time of the greatest change we have encountered so far. We go through periods of relative stability (history) that are followed by tumultuous and sudden change (herstory).

You and I get to be in on this, in whatever way we want to be. Once we begin awakening to that, it changes everything, and doesn’t stop.

Raphael Awen hails from SoulFullHeart Sanctuary. You can also track him on twitter via @raphaelawen, or on facebook: ­­­­­­­facebook.com/raphaelawen1. Please visit our Patreon Page if you’d like to support SoulFullHeart Sanctuary. We’d love to receive some of your money!

Spiritual La-La Land In A Time Of Impending Collapse: Golden Earth Tales

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

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Please visit our Patreon Page if you’d like to support SoulFullHeart Sanctuary. We’d love to receive some of your money!

(This is Part Six of the ongoing blog series: Golden Earth Tales.)

By Raphael Awen

It’s time in this blog series to pose a very important question.

The question goes something like this: How is seeking the nondual, or any other form of spiritual seeking for that matter, relevant at such a crazy time of global change that we are in the midst of? How is it not just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?

We are in the midst of epic changes to our industrial society and its way of life that we are all embedded in. The long and the short of it is that gasoline from a gas station, water from a tap, food from a store, or electricity from a hole in the wall are not likely to persist for much longer. All of the inter-related systems that hold these realities in place are growing more and more vulnerable and tension-filled by the day. I am personally surprised each passing month to see the present order of things stumble against the odds into the next month.

The transition we are facing promises to be difficult almost beyond imagination, chaotic and marked with great loss of life.

My sense is that if you haven’t faced this approaching chaos and come to your own personal grounded choices around it, your spirituality (of any kind) is in la-la land.

Eighteen months ago, my wife and I and two close friends chose to relocate to living off grid two countries south and entered into a crash course of learning to grow our own food. It’s a long story and a great story and you can read it here in our free e-book called Living As If. It’s free monetarily speaking, but reading it will cost you. It will cost you some of your indifference; it will cost you some of your comfort; and it will cost you some of your happiness that’s based in denial. If you’ve been looking to spend those things from your life, the free e-book is a great place to start.

I almost want to apologize for pontificating here. Almost. I just called you indifferent, didn’t I? I am trying to build an audience, not thin one out, but this message cannot be pansied around with. If you haven’t considered the changes that you can feel are coming, you are fucking around with your own life. It’s just that plain and simple. It’s suicide and indifferent to boot. I’d much rather you got offended and left off reading my blogs than using my teaching on the nondual as a way to keep your pile of denial intact. What I’d most rather see, however, is that you could listen to your own heart without needing any prodding from me or anyone else and prepare to ride out the coming storm.

Facing into this with power and choice will feel like nothing short of joining a cult. Your seeking to get others on board in your circle of family and friends will be seen as proselytizing. It will probably add up to being the most difficult thing you have undertaken this life.

When you look at this though through a first-things-first lens, no other approach makes any sense at all. As humans, our needs for survival will always trump our needs for seeking meaning. We embrace spirituality only when our basic needs of food, water, and shelter are met and have a reasonable expectation of continuity.

You may be in a place of what appears to be life-stability at the moment, but I venture to say that you have been sensing the approach of deep structural changes coming to our collective way of life. How could you not? This has left you with an ungrounded feeling. Your ventures into spirituality and meaning are left with one foot outside of the circle. You’re not all here, and rightly so, you shouldn’t be. Maybe ten years ago, maybe even five years ago, this could be a different story, but not now.

As I’ve been writing this series on the nondual, I’ve had a growing sense of disconnect to be offering it into an audience I fear has done little to reconcile with these coming changes. I’m openly asking the question of myself: how does this form of spiritual seeking that I’m advocating for not just another form of a mind-numbing drug?

The shit is about to hit the fan – make no mistake about it.

Like the Captain in the movie Titanic so soberly said just minutes after the iceberg was struck, “This ship will go down.” The Titanic story is a powerful prophetic story for our time. Our collective hubris is only exceeded by our denial, and we are about to be called on it.

Big outbreath….phew. I had to say that… in that way.

My own tendency towards denial is as good as the next person’s; the difference though is that I am aware of mine. That awareness has led and continues to lead to changes – not talk of changes, but balls-to-the-wall grounded change.

So what then is there left to say about the nondual in relation to all this unavoidable change?

My truth is that all the talk in the world of the nondual isn’t worth a fiddler’s fart if you are not in your power facing this approaching storm.

Consciousness itself has prepared this transformation for us, not against us. Consciousness doesn’t see the loss of physical life with the same hysteria as we do. Consciousness sees it as a transformation, not an end in itself. What is at stake is not your consciousness per se, but your physical life and the goals you as a soul associated with this life.

I am convinced that most will not (as they say) know what hit ‘em, as they feel completely victimized and overwhelmed by circumstances outside of their control. Everything in their conditioning will support their chosen view of excusing themselves.

But for those of us who unmistakably sense this coming storm, such luxuries of consciousness don’t add up to much, do they?

The Christians believe strongly in Jesus returning to sweep them away before it gets too unbearable – that at least gives them some form of hope or comfort. Their collective sense of coming chaos is well founded and grounded; it’s just their solution that doesn’t add up. No savior is returning to take care of your business for you. All the universe, God, the Divine, and Jesus himself will be glad to help you – but no one and nothing is going to do this for you. Doing stuff for you is known as infantilizing, and we are moving past that now in our emerging collective consciousness.

You can expect to be infantilized if you must and that will ensure you some comfort in the midst of this great chaos, though it will also pretty much guarantee your early demise. Or you can adult-up and make choices with the power you have and ride out this storm consciously in the deep and personal transformation of yourself and the collective that this will prove to be.

Raphael Awen hails from SoulFullHeart Sanctuary. You can also track him on twitter via @raphaelawen, or on facebook: ­­­­­­­facebook.com/raphaelawen1

Please visit our Patreon Page if you’d like to support SoulFullHeart Sanctuary. We’d love to receive some of your money!

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

Published on 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.

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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.

Letting In Arising Wonder: Golden Earth Tales

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

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(This is Part Six of the ongoing blog series: Golden Earth Tales.)

By Raphael Awen

I recall when I was first introduced to the terms ‘dual’ and ‘nondual’. The teaching intrigued me. It resonated in my heart.

I learned that an entire world of wonder had been dimmed down inside of me, as well as in my culture. This, I learned was due to the mind’s ability and propensity to categorize and ‘map’ my experiences, judging and evaluating them that in turn removed me from the essence and wonder of the experience itself.

The basic teaching goes that we, with our mind’s capacity, ‘dualize’ what we experience. We rate it, we judge it, we locate it – all of which we could not do were it not for this ‘dualizing’ ability. I was taught that the mind, metaphorically speaking, creates something similar to the grid lines that are established over an archaeological dig that provide reference points for where discovered items were found, allowing for mapping, cataloguing, and further study.

The problem, however, is that experience itself and the map of the experience are two very different things, but our minds have lost awareness of this. Our minds instead have become fused with the maps we create of our experience, causing us to lose more and more contact with the aliveness of the experience itself.

Let’s see if we can create a metaphor to bring this home a bit.

What are you doing right now? You’re reading a blog, and sizing up what you are getting out of it. That’s the mental map description/perception of what’s going on. But is there another deeper reality that you do not perceive right now, that is screened out from your perception by this mental map ‘doing’ your experience for you rather than the arising wonder of experience itself?

What else is there to notice? What are you missing, if anything?

What about the use of the written word, in this case English? Here I am referencing pen strokes that evolved into keyboard strokes, conveying written meaning into something called sentences that in turn produce a myriad of brain synapses firing that in turn produce wave after wave of rapid fire evaluations in you, and in turn emotional responses. I don’t guess your mind was paying attention to any of that just now. But isn’t it off-the-charts amazing reality that we came up with the motor skills and the mental skills to create squiggles in the sand that in turn came to be agreed upon and adopted as an alphabet to convey such specifics in meaning?

You are a participator in all of this and I’ll bet that you haven’t given yourself any pats on the back for your achievements in any of this since the third grade. Your use of alphabet and linguistics is all old-hat to you. Your mind has long gone on (or should we say ‘off’) in search of new things, which it will in turn deaden eventually into more of the same-old-same-old.

I could go on and on describing things that have just been assimilated into the mental map of how we navigate experience. There’s your eyeballs; there’s the temperature of the room you’re sitting in and however that came to be; there’s the lingering taste in your mouth from what you just ate; there’s the stream that became a river that became part of a hydroelectric dam that produced the electricity to illuminate the screen you are reading from.

Given all that experience has to offer, it’s an amazing wonder in itself that you are barraged with such oceans of experience without being totally stoned out of your mind in a hallucinogenic experience of what we would call total insanity. You have your mind to thank for that. Your mind ‘dualized’ the aliveness of the experiences themselves into an endless array of filed, categorized, and tamed representations of experience.

But how do we get back to the nondual, the raw experience and its plethora of the wild and amazing? I mean, I don’t want to be totally stoned and unable to function, but I would like a generous helping of arising wonder to be lapping onto my shores in an ever-increasing way. I’d like a good buzz for sure. I think you would too, right?

Here is the offer to discover the nondual where all is an arising wonder, where there are no (or at least, less and less) representational categories by the mind that kill off experience. It’s not too far at all to describe it as an altered state of consciousness. Of course it is.

At this point in my introduction into the world of the nondual is where I was kind of convinced this was for the particularly advanced or evolved in consciousness. It was an ‘attainment’ and that there were many steps between where I was at and where something magical like an ‘nondual awakening’ might begin occurring for me. My mind filed it off as something hopeful for the future, maybe one day. Maybe if I got really dedicated to some kind of meditation process to induce this for me.

My mind, in other words, just dualized the hell out of what I was being introduced to. Part of me pessimistically ‘knew’ that if I really let myself feel this desire for this kind of awakening, I’d probably fall prey to following a bunch of teachers and spending a lot of money in the process, and so it too helped to file this away for another time and place.

What I’ve been saying in this blog series and want to say over and over again is that nondual access isn’t something to attain. You already have it. You may well and correctly say ‘But I don’t experience the arising wonder in my daily experience that you speak of.’ That’s something different, isn’t it? I’m saying that the acceptance inside of yourself that you already have this something is what will precede it transacting for you in your felt experience of life.

You are already as enlightened as you will ever be – ‘positionally’ speaking. That’s part of your ‘In-divi-dual’ (your dual and nondual nature that can’t be separated) as we’ve been saying in this series. All that’s left is for it to manifest for you ‘experientially’. This is something that you are in direct control of. You choose to let into experience what you are already are and have.

Someone else may convince you to let this reality in or reject it, but only you can carry it out. You are the sovereign. There is no God, or god, that will take care of this for you. You have to want it; you have to let it in (if you want to that is!). You are the god who creates your experience here. Ask God/god instead to help YOU let-this-in.

Then fasten your seatbelt because you are opening yourself to a depth of reality that the universe and you are alchemizing through your desire nature.

Why would you settle for anything less?

Raphael Awen hails from SoulFullHeart Sanctuary. You can also track him on twitter @raphaelawen. Please visit our Patreon Page if you’d like to support SoulFullHeart Sanctuary.

 

 

 

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

Published on by Kasha RosaLeave a comment

By Kathleen Calder

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The day begins.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

You As An ‘In-divi-dual’: Golden Earth Tales

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

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(This is Part Four of the ongoing blog series: Golden Earth Tales.)

By Raphael Awen

Just before diving back into the warm waters of where we left off, I’m curious what digestions you have going on inside of you from the last blog in this series. I’d love to hear from you through the comments of this blog.

Take a moment if you can to feel what feelings and reactions came up for you in the comparisons we made of your dual and nondual nature.

If you’re like me, the feeling that the nondual needed me (and us) in order to come to know itself, began to open some things out for you.

It suggests (and this may be sacrilege to some) that the nondual wasn’t complete in itself. It decided at some point to extend its completeness out of itself into the expression of you and I, and the rest of the conscious universe. It birthed something out of itself.

However we imagine the infinite completeness of the nondual to be, it would seem that in its consciousness, it came to want something. Even if that wanting was a wanting to share its completeness, the nondual came to have a need. It lacked. It wanted to have an ‘other’ both to share its bounty with, and as a reflective mirror in which to look back on itself. We, along with the rest of the conscious universe, were birthed out of this need.

Need, want, and desire is the stuff that parented us. This is a tough one for many people to come to terms with. Many seek out the nondual as a way to tame their desire nature, feeling that their desire nature is at root of their suffering. Many spiritual teachers in turn offer this as a hook to gain adherents.

Identifying with one’s nondual nature will not help anyone rid themselves of their desire nature, though many will stumble in making the attempt. It will change a lot related to your desire nature, but desire itself is an inseparable part of being the combination of dual and nondual natures that we are.

This brings us back to where you and I live everyday. As great and magical as the infinite fulfillment, infinite love, infinite possibility world was and is, it wanted to take that out for a spin. You and I are that test drive, along with shoes, cars, sex and having a unique personality.

From this comes a whole other scary piece about you not existing as a ‘you’ in the un-individuated consciousness world of the nondual. No ‘you’ to ever know shoes, cars or sex.

No ‘you’ to know desire and its offspring – personal pleasure and displeasure.

Here, without a ‘you’ or an ‘other’, there’s no way for relationship either.

The nondual’s hunger in its awareness was to find a way outside of itself in search for a relationship mirror to come to know itself. This longing for relationship, to be known and seen by an other, is at the very core of our being. It would seem then that this need to be known extends all the way back to our nondual essence.

We also looked in the last blog entry in this series at how the nondual (oneness) birthed us into duality (‘twoness’) but put it in an inseparable package. English language captured this reality well in coming up with the word ‘In-divi-dual’ – duality that can’t be divvied, or twoness that can’t be separated. Maybe, we’re stumbling upon the better way to describe the root of all of our suffering – attempting to separate the inseparable.

It was Charles Eisenstein who first introduced this awareness to me where he teaches about the illusion of the split between spirit and matter in his free book ‘The Ascent Of Humanity’, which offers a heart and soul expanding picture of this fundamental split in consciousness awaiting reconciliation.

Christianity, where I spent a big part of my life, is a great example of this split as well. But you can look to the world around you and find this separation attempt everywhere you turn. In Christianity, the separation of essence attempt begins with man having a ‘sin’ nature, a ‘fallen’ nature. It’s the age-old thing of ‘you can’t sell someone on a solution unless you’ve sold them on the problem first,’ which of course is all inside a picture of seeking to gain control over the essentially uncontrollable ‘others’ of our dualistic reality.

Money, (and this is some more of Charles’ influence here) is maybe the king of all spirit and matter splits, because to make money out of something, that is to ‘monetize’ something, you need to separate the thing from its essence. You need to turn people into slaves, you need to turn forests into marketable board feet, you need to turn personal desire and passion into jobs. And to be able to do any of that, you need the illusory-spirit-and-matter split kept well intact. All matter is spirit; recognizing that leads to more and more wholeness. Remaining Ignorant to that leads to greater and greater neurosis.

You, however, as both spirit and matter, both dual and nondual that can’t be separated, that one part can’t be made better or worse, that can’t even be differentiated for that matter – is a grand invitation into a whole new self perception.

If this is true, then what does that say about all the minutia of how you see yourself in every aspect of your daily life? Letting in this new self-perception begins to affect everything in your life.

Raphael Awen hails from SoulFullHeart Sanctuary. You can also track him on twitter @raphaelawen. Please visit our Patreon Page if you’d like to support SoulFullHeart Sanctuary.

My Week Back At SoulFullHeart Sanctuary

Published on by Kasha RosaLeave a comment

By Kathleen Calder

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

I made a checklist. It contained 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.