Shame Spiral: A Part’s Journey

spiral-hands

*Note: The following was written by a part of me named Simon. This part of me has been my self-image, my presentation and interface with the world.

 Since I can remember, I have always had a voice in my head that said I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t “man” enough, wasn’t creative enough, the list goes on. Always comparing myself to that which I felt I lacked. “I will never be as confident as THAT person. I could never be as creative as them. Who am I kidding?” The irony I am learning is that those qualities I felt I lacked, are the very ones I might possess in spades. I would get frustrated with myself and then cap my passion sending me into a shame spiral. A flat-lined version of myself.

 The well-intended responses from friends and family never seemed to reach me, either because I just wouldn’t let them in, or they only scratched a surface. I needed someone who had been there. Someone who knew the texture and geography of the feeling space so as to guide me through the pain and not just mask it over. This has been Jillian and Wayne. They have given me space to express my spiral, to see it differently, and to feel through it rather than go around it. It is difficult for others to really go to the place I need to go, because they are afraid of what I might do, or afraid of their own spiral and reluctance to go there. Only when someone has been there and healed it healthfully can you be felt emphatically.

 A song that has come up that I resonate with is Alanis Morisette’s Spiral. The lyrics reflect this mechanism inside that has existed my whole life and maybe other lives. I remember early on in my process I heard this song and I wept as it struck a heart cord. I have come back a few times to this space and wondered why I was feeling this again. Hadn’t I healed this already? I am realizing healing has its own spiral. Each time I heal it moves, but may come back again for whatever purpose to heal again, and again, and again. I have learned that if I do not reach out for help, I get stuck in a suffering loop. Much different than a spiral. In the loop, you feel stuck. Unmoved. Anchored in a pile of shit. I don’t like that feeling. I need to stop the spiral and the only way to do that is to out it when I feel it. I need to out when I have been hurt or when I am angry or when I don’t feel good enough.

 To some that may be a “no brainer”. But for me, it has been a challenge for my own reasons. My life filled with experiences that felt like they cemented that voice with steel barbs. I know that being public with those experiences would be a vulnerable act but I am not there yet. Just doing this is vulnerable enough. I start with today and feel what I am feeling, and then move on to tomorrow and repeat. That is my process. The beginning of my journey. I want to say that if you too feel anchored in a pile of shit and are sinking in it, ask for help. Talk to someone that you feel safe to talk to. Contact Jillian and Wayne and SoulFullHeart. Do Something. Don’t let it stay there. It does you no goddamned good.

 I wanted to leave with the video and lyrics to Alanis’ song and hope they move you as they do me:

“Spiral”

I could be daydreaming but for a moment
And somehow they’re creeping back in
I could be sleeping awakened the torrent
Somehow I get caught in their grips again

And here I am in my shame spiral
I’m sucked in to it again
And I reach out for your benevolent opinion
And you bring the light back in

Don’t leave me here with all these critical voices
Cause they do their best to bring me down
When I’m alone with all these negative voices
I will need your help to turn them down

I could be listening to a conversation
The story I’m not even in
These voices have their way when I am unguarded
Suddenly I step in quicksand again

Once again in my shame spiral
I am glad that you’ve weighed in

Don’t leave me here with all these critical voices
Cause they do their best to bring me down
When I’m alone with all these negative voices
I will need your help to turn them down

All these judgements, so incisive
Voices left to their devices
This moments narratee is a desperate plea
For slack to be cut to me
Cut to me

Don’t leave me here with all these critical voices
Cause they do their best to bring me down
When I’m alone with all these negative voices
I will need your help to turn them down

Visit www.soulfullheart.com for more information about the SoulFullHeart Way of Life and to find out about our life assessment session offered over the phone or in person.

Entering Your Inner Garden Of Eden

 

adamandeve

Imagine…

You’ve signed up for a space exploration program. You are going to visit a recently discovered planet. You’ve been told that it is very similar to life on Earth- same atmosphere, same carbon-based life forms with humans as the most conscious on the planet. However, unlike the current difficult conditions on Earth, on this new planet all species live in harmony with each other, collaborating and cooperating in a balanced way that preserves the environment, provides for every creature’s basic needs, and allows all inhabitants to survive and thrive. Let’s call this world “utopia” as that term already has an association for most of us as an ideal and perfect place.

The Utopians look like humans, but the similarities end there. When you meet your first one, a woman, shortly after landing on their planet, you are struck by how clear her skin is and how radiant her energy. It’s like she is glowing from the inside out. Her body is healthy and vital. Her movements are fluid and relaxed; she feels grounded and centered in her female body.

Beyond the physical differences, you immediately notice that her language is different when she greets you and welcomes you to her world. This Utopian woman, let’s call her Eve, asks you if parts of you feel ok if she gives you a hug to welcome you to her world. You aren’t sure what she means but, suddenly, you’d like very much to receive a hug from this vital and warm woman. She embraces you and you feel a warm and loving energy spread from the top of your head to the bottom of your toes.

“Your energy is a bit lacking and heavy,” She says, looking you deep in the eyes and smiling. “I can feel how it’s been hard for parts of you to leave the home that they know. But, please know that we will provide the space for them to be felt by us in these reactions. They, and you, are welcome here.”

You don’t know what she means by “parts of you” but, again, you are reassured by her mere presence and the gentle yet firm way she holds your hand. You begin to suspect that the warmth coming from her hand is helping you feel more relaxed and energized at the same time, yet you aren’t sure how that could be.

A Utopian man comes up; we’ll call him Adam (of course!), and puts his arm around the woman. “I see Eve has you in good hands,” he says, laughing at his own joke, flashing beautiful white teeth and a spontaneous smile that has you laughing and smiling along with him. Still grinning, he looks you deeply in the eyes and repeats Eve’s welcome. “It might take parts of you awhile to acclimate to being here,” he says, suddenly more serious.

He studies you some more and tears spring into his eyes. “I feel the pain that is in in your heart; I feel how parts of you are afraid. What I want to remind you is that this is how things were meant to be for you. How it is here. Not like where you come from. This is how things were meant to feel.”

Tears start streaming down your face, seemingly against your self control. You don’t understand why his words hurt and feel comforting at the same time. Your mind can’t comprehend really anything that he is saying or what it means, but it feels good to feel his eyes on you and to see the tears of understanding in his eyes.

“I’m feeling you,” he explains, taking your other hand in his. “This is what it feels like to be felt by someone who can feel you. Your parts are drinking it in. The tears are a sign of their defenses melting. You and they need much, much more of this. It was what you were meant to have.”

You nod, again, not sure what it is that you are agreeing to. Yet, you are here with Adam and Eve, bright sun shining on your skin, birds chirping in the background, waves crashing against the shore as you stand on a pristine, white sand beach, feeling the warmth of their hands on yours, feeling their tears as they focus only on you, feeling the love so easily coming from them to you. This does feel like how it was meant to be. This does feel like home.

Adam and Eve walk you to an airy and spacious one room hut made of bamboo and dried palms. There’s an open living space with a kitchen, living room, and sleeping area. It’s cozy, warm, and right on the beach so you can still hear the waves outside. It is decorated in natural fabrics, shells from the ocean, with healthy and vibrant plants tucked in every corner and big cushy pillows on the floor in the living area.

They tell you that they’ll be back in a couple of hours, so you may take this time to relax, rest, and adjust to your new environment. They point out that there is a journal and a pen on the nightstand by the bed if you want to check in with any of your parts about the journey and how they are feeling.

“What do you mean by ‘checking in’?” You ask them as you sit down on one of the cushions on the floor, feeling that same sense of confusion yet familiarity.

Adam and Eve smile and look at each other with empathetic grins, then back at you. “We’ll explain it all to you after you’ve rested more. But, we won’t need to explain much because this will all be natural for you. After all, it’s what you were…”

“Meant to do,” you finish their sentence.

“Yes! You are getting it!” exclaims Adam, flashing his wide grin again. Eve nods happily and exits, leaving Adam standing in the doorway. He gazes at you intensely again, seeming to look straight into the heart of you, peeking at your insides in a focused yet loving way.

“So, why don’t parts of you believe in God?” he asks, his tone innocent and curious, no judgement in his tone that you can feel.

You sigh, memories of Sunday mornings spent in church or synagogue or at temple running through your mind. You remember boredom, disconnect, and an underlying feeling of wrongness about yourself related to God. Or, you have no connection to God at all. It’s a blank canvas, nothing written or imprinted.

“Part of me hates the God of religion,” you answer, using their language despite yourself. Well, using “part of me” seems appropriate in this case because of course not ALL of you feel this way.

Adam nods, as if he deeply understands. “Yes, part of me hates the god of your religions too. Not a God that I would want to get to know.” He moves across the room and sits by you on the cushions laid out on the floor. “We don’t have religions here. We have only experience of That Which Made Us. Our Creator. It is our Mother and our Father. Both.”

“Our religions only have a male God. Our Father. And male prophets too.” Bitterness has crept into your tone. You don’t know where it’s coming from.

Adam looks confused, but you can tell that he is trying to understand and feel where your pain comes from. “But, that would exclude half of your people from having a Creator that matches their own face and bodies! That would make women feel as if they were less than men! As if only men were worthy to be represented by Creator! That would make men feel as if they were better somehow than women. Or that they would have a right to control or dominate the women! And, putting a male face on Creator would make It seem like a human rather than That Which Made Us All!”

You nod sadly, feeling sorry that his grasping of your reality is tainting his own sense of joy and goodness. You begin to worry that you will cause him pain somehow by bringing your life into his.

He picks up what you are feeling and takes your hand. “It’s ok. For the part of you that wants to take care of me, I want to tell it that I am fine. My trust and connection with my Creator runs very deep. Yes, I am shocked and feel very passionate about the picture of your religions being off and hurting many people in its distortions. But, I am here to offer you and any others who would like to receive it, a new experience of their Creator which is not like this one at all. Would you like this?”

You swallow a lump in your throat. It has been a long time since you have felt any longing for God. Or, maybe you have been a spiritual seeker for a long time but have abandoned the idea of a creator and embraced the non-dual or sagely teachings this life. Or, you are connecting to God despite the picture of religion and understand exactly what he is offering. Although you probably wouldn’t be reading this if you did.

“Yes, I would like this,” you say, tears beginning to fall again. “Part of me is afraid of it. Part of me feels very angry at the religion’s God, as I said before. And part of me…maybe this is me, feels very much like the Creator you describe is what I was meant to experience.”

“Yes, it is,” Adam says, wiping away your tears with his hands. “This, as all things, will be negotiated with your parts at a rate and pace that you and they can bear. This is the mercifulness of my Creator and especially the Mother’s face of the Creator. She holds us as we feel our pain and makes it possible for us to bear it. She wipes our tears and She will help you get to know the most sacred and precious aspect of you called your Daemon or Soul Guardian. This part of you will become your collaborator, your muse, your pipeline to Divine guidance, and help you open up access to your soul gifts. As you feel this Daemon part of you, you help it heal from past life pains and traumas. It needs your human heart and compassion in order to heal.”

You nod, as if you have any idea what he is talking about. But, again, it just all sounds right even if the words are foreign. Mother’s Face of the Creator. Daemon. Past lives.

“Is there a young part inside of me too?” You ask, already knowing that there is. You have heard of the idea of having an “inner child” and this is something that you’ve felt inside of yourself in response to doing fun things or eating particular foods from your childhood. Or you’ve felt this part in response to your own children.

“Of course, yes,” says Adam, gazing at you again. “This part of you is very sweet. Very innocent in its’ nature. Yet, also, it is in much pain and very shy. This part of you suffered much in your childhood and your caretakers, even if they love you very much, weren’t able to feel you while you were experiencing those pains. So those pains get stuck at certain ages and places. This young part of you may actually be several parts stuck in different times because the pain was not able to be digested by you and so it remains subconsciously stuck there.”

“Do you have parts? Or were you felt by your caregiver while you were feeling things?”

Adam looks down for a minute, as if contemplating how to answer. Then, he looks up, more serious again. “Eve and I are the first of our kind. We are the only humans on Utopia. This is why we’ve invited people from your world to join us, even though we can feel how different we are from you right now. Our Creator has guided us to bring others this picture of life that we were just born into. Our Creator offers that some people will respond to it and come along although it will be much harder for you because you will need to heal from the pains that you brought with you rather than just your reactions in the moment, as Eve and I do.”

You realize now that there were no other Utopians to greet your ship as it landed. Only Eve and then Adam came along soon after. You realize that you have not seen any other Utopians since you have arrived there. You realize that actually there were no other people from Earth who came along with you on your journey. You were the only one who answered the call for adventure, journey into the unknown, and took the risks that that choice required of you. You feel a rush of loneliness and homesickness, suddenly thinking of your family. Or maybe your children. Or your husband, wife, girlfriend or boyfriend.

“You and Eve must feel so lonely!” You exclaim, again feeling an impulse to take care of this wonderful and strange man that you’ve just met.

Adam gazes at you. “Yes and no,” he says. “Our love and connection with each other is very deep and rich. We are individuals as our Creator intended us to be. Yet, our intimacy ground, our “usness” as we like to call it, is a third entity that we both serve love to and respond to on a moment by moment basis. I do not own Eve nor does she own me. We have a commitment to serve love in the moment, that is all. We do not understand what you call “marriage contracts.” You cannot guarantee something such as love. It arises or it does not. You cannot control it. You can open your heart to let in more or you can feel where you do not feel connected in love anymore.”

You are amazed by his description of love and intimacy as it is so different than the mainstream picture of marriage, divorce, and expectation of lifelong commitment and staying together no matter how unhappy you are. Yet still, he admitted to being lonely even with his connection with Eve?

“Yes, Eve and I felt a growing desire to share our love and goodness with others. To invite, as I said, others into our garden of love and invite them to eat the fruit of the Creator’s love with us.”

You are suddenly reminded of the Garden of Eden and the serpent and the apple and original sin. You are reminded of the fall of humanity from the grace of God. You are reminded of Original Sin and the twisted way that religion has presented the very thing that you are now being invited to become part of.

“That story has indeed been twisted,” says Adam, seeming to read your mind. “The garden of Eden is not a place, although where you are now comes close. The Garden of Eden lives inside of your heart. It lives as a seed, planted inside of you by your Creator. Planted inside every person as a reflection of the sacred human essence for which we are all made is the template of your own expression of an Adam or an Eve. Your seeds just need water to grow and bloom into the sacred human you were meant to be. But the false self part of you which is created in order to fit into the barren world for which you are born keeps you small and denied of this food. Your false selves use stories such as the distorted one that we just mentioned to keep you from letting in the love water and food that is actually always available to you.”

The Garden of Eden lives inside your heart, you think about this. You like the idea of it and you like the idea of having a seed of sacred human essence that is just waiting to bloom. The idea of a false self, for now, is one that is hard to digest.

“How do I get the water for my seed to bloom?” You are already wondering how bloomed your seed is compared to Adam’s. To your husband or wife’s. To your other family members or friends.

Adam gets up, beginning to head for the door. “It’s not something that you can get,” he says. “It’s only something that you can let in.”

He turns to you one last time and you miss his warmth and comfort already. “And, to be able to do that, you need to feel the parts of you who are afraid to let it in and why they are afraid,” he says. “This is a process of healing that will take some amount of time, energy, and passion for you to be part of. In the meantime, you will have to give up some things that you are currently very attached to because it is most likely your false self which is attached to them. Any relationship, things, or belief systems that are used to keep you from feeling what your parts and you are authentically feeling will need to be felt into being let go off. There will be many of them and it will be very, very hard. You would only choose to do this if your desire to bloom into your sacred human essence is strong. You would only choose this if you feel a deep loneliness and also a desire to be in deep connection with a heart mate like I described. You would only choose this if you want to deeply know and love your Creator in way that goes much beyond what your religions have offered. You would only choose this if it feels like the only and best way that is being offered to you at this time and if, it feels as if you were meant…”

“To choose it,” you say, finishing his sentence.

He nods softly, saying, “Take your time to feel into this choice, especially now that you and parts of you know what is at stake. Now that you know that basically everything that you have known from your world will be questioned and felt into and potentially need to be let go of, even if for only a phase of time, if that’s what feels right. Now that you have met and experienced Eve and I, take your time to feel into if you want to stay with us and continue your journey.”

He puts his palms together and bows in your direction. You return the gesture, your head spinning and heart churning with all that you’ve experienced and taken in already.

He continues, “If you decide not to, we will send you back to your home with some sadness but also complete acceptance of your decision. If you decide to stay, I promise you that you and your life will not remain unchanged. I promise you that you will experience love in ways and in depths that you cannot even dream or imagine possible at this moment. And I promise you that Eve and I will be there to support and guide you all along your journey and so will your Creator so, in that, you will never really be alone again.”

He leaves you alone with your choices and your possibilities. He leaves you to take your time to “feel into” if you will say yes or no. You curl up on the pillows, wrapping a blanket around your body even though the tropical breezes keep you perfectly cool. You close your eyes, imagining how it would be to leave everything that you’ve come to know as your world and potentially the people in it in order to embark on a new adventure into the garden of your inner Eden. You imagine how it would be to get to know these parts of yourself that Adam has described: your inner child, innocent and shy; your Daemon, tortured yet beloved soul guardian; your false self, self-protective and wanting to keep you safe.

You begin to hope that your husband or wife or girlfriend or boyfriend would want to join you too and that maybe you could have the kind of relationship that Adam and Eve do. You begin to hope that you could feel the Creator the way that Adam described and perhaps feel the part of you that hates God. You begin to wonder how and if you could ever give up that hope and risk to let anything and anyone go who doesn’t serve your most authentic self.

Or maybe you feel only like resting and sleeping for a while. Letting the love and possibilities seep into your starved heart and soul. Doing their magic while you sleep in the arms of unseen angels. You fall asleep resting into the sense, at least in the moment, that you are exactly where you are meant to be.

And, you are.

Letting Go With Love: Healing Codependency In Our Relationships

letting-go-of-a-relationshipFamily, friends, and lovers. These are our most intimate connections. Some of us have a multitude of them. Some of us, just a few. What really matters is the quality and kind of connection we have with them. In my “past” life, I had my family, both nuclear and extended, several friends, and a few lovers (not at once, mind you). As I went through my SoulFullHeart process, I began to feel the real inadequacies and co-dependencies within these relationships. Both for myself and for them as well. Confronting these emotional realities consciously, I began to realize that I could not continue holding on to a false relationship. A false relationship to me is one where the transaction is between two false selves feeding off each other for their own emotional survival.

Cords needed to be “severed” in the name of love for myself and for them. I put severed in quotes because the word has a connotation of forever. I do not desire to be apart forever. Just until we both can truly see and feel each other on a ground that is level enough to transact a deeper and non-codependent connection. One that is based on willing to feel ourselves as an assortment of wounded subconscious parts and a desire to feel our separation from and ache for the Divine.

This connection may or may not ever happen in my previous relationships. I pray that it does. But if it does not, I do not hold myself or them in contempt. It is not about being stubborn or defensive as it is about holding a value system that is just plain different. We may just be cut from a different cloth and there is no love lost in that. I say that because that is what I really wanted to get at. “Loss of love” is not possible in my experience of it. Love exists always and cannot be destroyed or lost. I have boundaries and conditions, yes. But I also have love. A love that is far greater and real than the “love” our false selves have chosen to agree to in our day-to-day lives. This love is not nicey nice. It is not just light and airy. It is real. It is sticky. It is honest and it is painful. It is humbling and forgiving. It is ecstasy and celebration. It is what we want it to be and it is what we don’t.

I have love for those who have been in my life and I always will. I do because they are a mirror unto myself, and I a mirror unto them. Each one of them has enriched my life for the better. Each one taught me more about myself than I could have alone. I experienced my parts in relationship to them. True, they were formed because of my experience with some of them, but they are also healed because of my experiences with them as well. They were not in my life if they did not have something to offer me, and I them. We drew each other for a purpose, whether for the short term or the long.

Recently, I said good-bye, at least for the short term, to a mate with whom I had become co-dependent. Whenever I write or hear the word ‘codependent’, a part of me feels like it cheapens the experience we had together. It unequivocally does not. It gave us both a vantage point from which to see and feel ourselves more consciously than we would have otherwise. A part of me was dependent on feeling wanted and desired. Dependent on being looked up to and adored. Dependent on being depended upon. It is hard for this part to admit that, let alone let go of.

The subtleties of co-dependence can be very difficult for us to be conscious of. It takes others outside ourselves, such as an SFH facilitator, to be a witness to them and then provide an objective mirror of us to see it. It can be dismissed at first, many times with fierce anger, like a lion protecting her cubs. But over time you see it, then you feel it. It can’t be ignored if you truly want to heal and grow.

After saying good-bye, I could feel a part of me needing to know how she was, what she was feeling, what she was doing. I held that part by feeling his feelings and journaling with him. I helped him to surrender into trust and faith in the Divine Mother. “You mustn’t worry about her, my love,” the Mother tells me. “She is held by me. You can let go. She will not fall.” This part of me struggled, but it lessened each day.

What happens next is unknown. I still feel my former mate and the others in my heart. I pray that they experience what they need to for more growth and arising bigness. I hold the possibility that we will see each other again through different lenses that reflect our truer, bigger selves.

As for me, I continue to lean into the Divine. A new frontier awaits: one that holds an expanding SoulFullHeart Way Of Life Society. One where I, too, have experiences that support my growth and bigness as a leader, a teacher, a healer, a friend, and a lover.

Visit www.soulfullheart.com for more information about the SoulFullHeart Way of Life and to find out about our new life assessment session offered over in person or over the phone.

The Deepest Source Of Stress In Your Life Is..

truthtelling2

I like the feeling I get when I write. It’s been a while and I miss it. It’s a feeling of both living out of, and reaching for a deeper consciousness and getting to express a deeper perspective that transcends content based living. I like reading what I wrote and a part of me wonders, “Wow, did I just write that?” I like imagining the readers reaction as I reread it again and again. I also write in search of a deeper glimpse of who I am, and who I am becoming. It’s also a bit of a sterile intimacy too, which part of me judges, as writing about deep personal experience isn’t the same as having one in real time with another person.

That’s a window into me in this moment as I’m writing. This is an example of my emotionally conscious truth telling. It feels different to start with a vulnerable glimpse into what I am feeling rather than some brilliant and well crafted mental words that are designed to mask true feeling and instead seek to impress you and secure your interest.

The feelings about what I, or parts of me, want; the frustrated feelings about what I’m not getting in return; the feelings of writing sometimes to escape the boredom of content-based living are all an aspect of what’s true for me in writing this.

Knowing what’s really going on, at the level of motivation, in the mind and heart of anyone whose writing you read or anyone you relate with changes everything. Not knowing what’s going on inside yourself emotionally and secondarily inside the heart of the person you are relating with is the deepest source of all stress in your life.

In other words, the ‘why’ of why I’m writing, or why I’m seeking your interest is far more powerful and affective than the content of my words. And, it’s true of all relationships.

We have been profoundly conditioned to mask our true feelings….so much so, that most everyone of us, including myself,…our biggest life lesson and healing task this life will be based around regaining our lost sense of feeling ourselves.

It wouldn’t be so bad if our only shortfall was not not knowing and feeling ourselves. The deeper problem is what it leads to, which is lying. It leads to lying of the posturing, pretense and performing variety, non stop, to ourselves and everyone around us, and most of it off of our conscious radar. And there’s such stress that results!

This dynamic of living has become so foundational to us, and interwoven into the very fabric of our beings that if one were to eliminate it in one instant, it would result in a self destruct psychosis too much to bear. We didn’t gain it this way and we don’t lose it this way. We became this way over time, in a process and in relationship with others and with our parts, and in this we can bring what we are authentically feeling and thinking in every moment and that is how we find our way back.

Visit www.soulfullheart.com for more information about the SoulFullHeart Way of Life and to find out about our new life assessment session offered over in person or over the phone.

Spiritual Tsunami: Recovering The Lost Members Of Your Inner Family

Tsunami2

Last night, I watched the movie The Impossible.  It is a film based on true events of a family who lived through the horror of the 2009 tsunami in Thailand.  In it, a family is literally torn apart from each other and was able, beyond all odds, to reunite themselves with each other in the end.

As I watched, I could feel my Daemon, Raybone, analogizing it to a spiritual tsunami that is crashing on the shores of humanity.   Our human family has been torn apart by lifetimes of destructive forces that have left us feeling alone and afraid.  We have been separated from each other and are longing to connect again to the soul of our connectedness.  War, famine, politics, money, poverty, environmental concerns, just to name a few, are drowning out our connection to each other and to the Divine.

The irony is that the solution to these issues could very well be the thing that brings us back together.  But the question is how do we ‘solve’ these overwhelming forces of our current situation?  Raybone would offer that the solution is within ourselves.  What is the underlying cause of our predicament?  Leaders of the world are looking at the external rather than the internal.  The mundane rather than the profound.   The material rather than the sacred.

We are spiritual beings having a human experience.  We must get back to our roots as children of the Divine source of all of life.  Some of us have just given in to powerlessness.  We have no control so we will just sit here and die.  Others are looking for triage and seeking the help they need to survive.  And there are those who are taking it upon themselves to recover the lost souls of their ‘family’.

These people have many names.  They are a part of many groups.  SoulFullHeart is one of them.  It is my doctor, my healer, my calling.  I am not going to claim that it is the only doctor in the house.  However, it is mine.  Through actively engaging in healing your parts and your wounding, you are essentially recovering the lost members of your ‘family’.  You are reconnecting to your authentic self and to the Divine.

We are searching for you.  Aching for you.  Calling for you to find your soulful heart.  It is who you are and were always meant to be.

Visit www.soulfullheart.com for more information about the SoulFullHeart Way of Life and to find out about our new life assessment session offered over the phone.

Related Articles:

Leaving Pleasantville: Claiming Your Soul Bigness

Life As A Divine Playground

Opening Our Blind Eyes

Getting Our Emotional Needs Met Through Parts Work

Inner-Child

From the moment we are born, we are being taught how to survive and get our basic needs meet. Our caregivers provide us (most of us in the western world anyway) with food, shelter, and the essentials to help us grow and thrive. They also offer us templates for how to deal with our emotional needs which, in most families, is about not having them at all. We are non-mental, purely emotional and energetic beings as babies, so our reactions to our environment are unfiltered and undefended. We scream when we are upset. We cry when we want something. We fuss when our emotional needs are not being met. We coo and smile when we are in joy. We quickly learn which of these reactions are met with approval and love by our caregivers and which are not. When we scream and cry, we might receive comforting but usually we receive more food and a diaper changing. When we are happy, we receive more attention and love to fortify this expression.

In my experience working with parts or subpersonalities of people and in myself for ten years, it is during even this early time that parts of us and our false self begin to form and the pure, undefended reactions of our authentic self start to be covered over. Parts of us form when we experience pain or trauma from this life or past lives that is undigested and becomes stuck in our subconscious at the time it happened. If our emotional needs could be met in those moments and our pain felt by a loving, heart open other person, the part becomes unstuck and the pain digested through.

This is the digestion process that the SoulFullHeart Way of Life offers us. Through identifying, getting to know through journaling, and having parts felt by a SFH facilitator during sessions, the parts in us that have subconsciously formed begin to heal and eventually integrate into the growing authentic self called the SFH self. The SFH self is who we were meant to be if we’d experienced that our emotional needs were met in every moment and our pain and traumas were able to be digested. The SFH self is the seed of our sacred humanity as a child of Divine parents and is able to hold the parts in a loving, supportive way that provides what we need to heal. The SFH self meets the needs of the parts in a healthy emotional way by feeling them rather than providing them with medications in the form of codependent relationships, substance abuse, and other means that the false self part of us uses to distract and numb our feelings.

Since we are not taught how to meet our own emotional needs nor did we receive a healthy emotionally healthy template from our families (to the degree that they didn’t receive one!), we have to learn this for ourselves though a reconditioning process where the emotional needs of all parts of us is primary to us. The process of healing with parts is ultimately a temporary one, necessary only because in this phase of human consciousness we have placed a priority on mental attainment, physical achievement, family security, codependent relationships, self image creation, superficial entertainment, and material possession. Until we embrace as a culture that our emotional health and healing is the primary way that we filter reality, we need processes such as SoulFullHeart to bring us back into our natural and healthy balance.

I feel the Divine Mother offering that this is an important step to healing ourselves, our planet, and our relationships with each other. There are other steps and paths, yet allowing for the reality of parts seems to bring a catalytic and lasting transformation to our species-long quest for answers, meaning, deeper purpose, and, most importantly, to finally getting our emotional needs met.

 Visit www.soulfullheart.com for more information about the SoulFullHeart Way of Life and to find out about our new life assessment session offered over in person or over the phone.

Being Vulnerably On The Altar Of Our Humanity And Our Divinity

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By Wayne Vriend

Recently, part of me was feeling anxiety about money feeling tight, and I could feel initially the background emotional tension around it. This same part of me has also been deeply feeling the very edge of deep change that we are on now in our world, and of course anxiety about how that will affect Jillian and I personally as it plays out.

I connected with this part of me through a journaling dialogue on pen and paper and felt its desire to reach out to the Divine Mother for guidance, I received the following guidance from the Divine Mother to this part of me:

“You must be willing to feel how all of life is vulnerable. Life is powerful, alive, amazing, and also vulnerable. Of course you feel anxiety in life. It is part of life. The stress comes when you are not willing or able to feel that life is vulnerable. You need the freedom to say ‘I feel afraid,’ when you feel that way, and recognize when you do. There are no guarantees. There is fear; there is desire; there is you and there is me.

THAT is why living life with your heart open is so courageous. You feel yourself, instead of medicating over your desires and hopes and fears. You tremble in the arms of me, Mother, if that is what you need to do. You curl up and ache and bawl on the floor if that is what comes. You have your own private and manageable nervous breakdown right there. You are all alone in one way and yet so held and loved, like you’ve never known, and like you cannot ever forget.

Life re-arises and comes back into focus, and even with strength and power, but these are not things you use to medicate the feelings of life’s never ending vulnerability, but instead feel your share in being unalterably on the altar of humanity and Divinity at the same time.”

This part of me felt so relieved and encouraged to feel the aliveness that comes from not suppressing vulnerable feelings and instead embracing them, owning them and making them mine. I have and get to play with power, and creativity, and purpose, but inside of a container of need and dependence and never ending reality of being a beloved child of my Divine parents.

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Experiencing Authentic Social Connections

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By Christian Tydeman

Social connections.  We all desire to be a part of something bigger.  Without these connections we feel lost, alone, and scared.  We are naturally social creatures.  Our heart and souls require connectivity for purpose and support.  But the kind of connections we have and make can keep us small or challenge us to be big.  They can serve us or confine us.

Our first experience of this social web is our family.  They leave the biggest imprint on us and this guides us in our formation of future independent connections.  There are school connections, interest connections, work connections, and connections of connections.  Some of us have but a few, others have hundreds (or thousands if you feel a Facebook ‘friend’ is a connection).  

In all of these myriad of bonds, how many are authentic to you?  Why are they there?  Maybe they have a function.  Someone to talk sports with, someone to hear music with, someone to cry with, someone to laugh with.  Maybe you feel obligated because they are family, your “best” friend, or they have no one else to connect with.  How honest can you be with them?  How challenging can they be with you?

For most of my life, a part of me chose the safest connections.  The ones that were least resistive or challenging.  The ones that kept him safe and comfortable.  This part was, and to some degree still is, very much obligated to family connections even if they didn’t resonate with him any longer.  To truly live into my soul experience, I had to temporarily withdraw from these connections.  This was a difficult choice and one that this part of me regrets on some level.  

Magdalene offers me that our social web be created from the inside out.  We must feel ourselves in our loving authenticity and then create bonds that nurture and challenge its growth.  To stay in contact with someone that does not resonate with your higher purpose is not self-loving to you or compassionate to them as you are just enabling their fear of growth and change.

But sometimes we may need to back into these bonds.  Our parts may need to feel them again in relation to how we are now.  We may need to own something that we did to them.  They may own something they didn’t feel before.  New ground may surface or not.  Regardless, we get to feel ourselves again in a new way, in contrast to who we were.  We get to heal our heart and feel our soul journey with more clarity.

And to that, Magadalene says…Amen.  

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Feeling And Healing The Beauty Competition Between Women

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By Kathleen Calder

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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When Lightning Strikes Your Tree: Healing Through Rapid Changes

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By Kathleen Calder

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

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

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

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

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

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

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