Tag: Collapse

Summer Season Of Swarms And Storms: Life At El Rancho Blog

Published on by Jelelle AwenLeave a comment

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By Jelelle Awen

Today is June 21st, summer solstice, the day with the most hours of daylight and the beginning of summer. It means something different here on the ranch then it did in Canada. In Canada, the beginning of summer is the beginning of better weather. Maybe. Or at least you can count on July and August to be fairly decent. Summer in Canada is beautiful sunsets, hikes, dips in the water, watermelon, gatherings outside on patios, less clothing and usually more sex, an exhale and a shedding of a water logged skin in exchange for a tanned one. Summer is an event because of the tempestuous weather the rest of the year. Summer was always my favorite season and I would mourn deep down in my bones every time it turned cold and rainy again.

Here in Mexico, summer is different. Summer is the rainy season and the low tourism season. It is called the ‘off season’ for that reason. Summer on the ranch will be about navigating the increasingly bulging and rapid river that cuts off traffic and even people at times. Summer means that we can no longer drive our van on the ranch road and need to get rides with the couple who lives here who has a 4X4 and is gracious to give them to us. Summer will be stormy and windy with lightning storms and sometimes tail ends of hurricanes. In some ways, I can’t wait.

To experience extreme weather is to be thrust into the uncertainty of life. A rumble of thunder, a crack of lightening, a gust of wind…violent and uncontrollable. Reminding us of our fragility. The gift of being alive here. And Now. We’ve experienced two storms here that brought this into focus for us, both tail ends of hurricanes. Their power was undeniable. This is a good kind of humbling at times, especially for humans who feel that we must conquer nature rather than be in union with it.

We experienced another extreme here last week after the first rains since March. A huge swarm of flying termites, set free from their cocoons sheltering under the roof tiles. They were a horde surrounding every house. “It’s like the house is on fire!” exclaimed Wayne as I was quickly shutting every shutter that I could. But they got in anyway and we spent a restless night flicking them off of us and spent days cleaning up the wings that they shed. “It was gross,” part of me says. And, it was. But yet, also, it was another example of the uniqueness of experience here at the ranch, things that just couldn’t happen in cities. Some we like better than others, for sure.

The swarm seemed to offer us a message of masses, a group rising, born, arrived. We were hopeful that maybe it represented what we are feeling more and more: a desire for others to join us here in community. We feel the possibilities of expanding our community here to offer others the goodness, transformation, and intimacy that we’ve experienced. We envision building cabanas for people and sharing community space, united by a desire for healing and living sustainably. If you are interested in becoming part of our swarm, please visit our website at soulfullheart.com and contact us at soulfullhearts@gmail.com.

Summer is the season of Magdalene, lover and wife (I feel, as do a growing number of historians) of Yeshua. Magdalene offers sisterhood and brotherhood experience within community. Sexuality without sinful feelings between connected lovers. She invites us to explore metaphysical realms, feel the magic of the natural world, discover our latent soul gifts. And all of these while adoring and inhabiting our physical bodies. Magdalene is easy to connect with as an ascended teacher. She is quite the talker and loves to tell stories and have dialogues. If you want to feel her, just ask her to speak with you or tell her that you’d like to feel connected to her. Imagine a beautiful woman with long, red, curly hair and bright eyes. Imagine her deific smile and earthly laugh. Imagine Her smelling of sandlewood and lavender. Play some Lorenna Mckennit. And, there off you go together.

The season of swarms and storms. The season of connection and community. I welcome it.

Jelelle Awen is co-creator and facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Go here to connect with Jelelle on facebook. Visit the SoulFullHeart website  for more information about virtual sessions with her.

From Collapse to Sanctuary: An Appeal to Heal

Published on by Gabriel HeartmanLeave a comment

spent-planet

Industrial collapse and emotional/spiritual healing. They sound like unlikely bedfellows. There are not many voices in the grids that link the two intimately. Those that see an imminent global economic collapse, the likes our civilization has never experienced, are still mired in the content of convincing others that it is actually coming or what the best ways to prepare are. Not quite able to make that first step to building sanctuary. Those that are very aware of how our wounded hearts and souls have created a deeply unsustainable way of living are seeking their own healing to help themselves and the planet. But the thought of an actual collapse is swept under the proverbial rug so as to not feel the enormity of the fear that comes with that. If they continue with their healing that is all they can do to help the world change course.

The dire situation we as a species find ourselves in is a direct result of our collective emotional and spiritual wounding. The choices we have made have been to seek a medication to that wounding or a justification of our unworthiness as human beings. Organized religions and professional therapies have tried to offer a salve for the pain, but come up short on true transmutative healing and in many cases replaces one medication for another. There is a collective shadow that grows larger by the day and it seeks to be healed one way or another. The balance of life seeks equilibrium and the tipping point is soon approaching.

To project our current crisis onto the Illuminati, the Bilderbergs, the Republicrats or some other third party is a convenient way to take the co-created responsibility out of your hands and put you in state of indentured victimtude. Yes, there is corporate greed. Yes, there are those who have a shit load of power that are making things indelibly worse. But guess what, you drive the car that consumes the gas that is running out of short supply that is found in foreign countries that we want to bomb to take control of it or found in areas that can only be accessed by raping the very Earth that provides us our daily bread. You buy the products that are manufactured by the poor in poor countries who are owned by multinational corporations that have executives that earn a gazillion times more because they are really good at taking advantage of humanity. You buy the food that is raised in holocaust-type environments that use copious amounts of toxic chemicals and that spill tons of it into our waterways. The list goes on.

Now, I fully admit my own role in this co-creation. I did, and to a lesser extent still do, some of those things listed. I still own a vehicle, but is on the market. I still buy some plastic products that are the bane of this Earth. I buy produce that had to be shipped to its location. But what I am doing is transitioning. I, along with my two friends, are moving our way to sustainable sanctuary, one emotional step at a time. I do not intend to come off judgmental or holier than thou. I am intending to bring into awareness our own responsibility in the current situation and that it takes time to move from one lifestyle to another. From unconsciousness to consciousness.

Collapse and healing will be one in the same when it happens on a grander scale. When costs skyrocket or delivery is stopped, and you can’t get the things you once took for granted, there will be an emotional response. You will go through shock, anger, depression, or other uncomfortable feelings. Others will do the same. The solutions to get those old needs met will range from barter to theft and maybe worse. When medications are abruptly taken away, the parts of us that needed them will do what they need to get them back depending on the level of dependency. And I am afraid the world is full of medicinally-dependent people. I was one of them, and still have a few to heal through.

My purpose is to wake something up in someone. Make a connection or two. You may just ignore me, but you would also be ignoring yourself and I am not okay with either. You may just call me a doomer or a hypocrite (because I am using a computer which is fueled by electricity which is fueled by some non-renewable source), but you would be missing my point and I am not okay with that either. I honestly want you to wake up. I want you to take a step in the direction of real change and empowerment. For yourself, humanity, and the planet. Feel for yourself what is happening in the world and to the world. Feel what is happening inside yourself and to yourself. They are one in the same actually. And when you really feel that, you have only one choice. Take responsibility, take back your power, and heal your way to sanctuary.

Cows, caterpillars, and cabbage: Life At El Rancho Blog

Published on by Jelelle AwenLeave a comment

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By Jelelle Awen

Nature is a better partner than slave– Gaia’s Garden

I am dreaming of plants. Last night, the big crisis of my dream was about providing a trellis for a runner-type sweet pea plant to weave and wrap around. Would I be able to get it supported before it collapsed onto the soil in defeat? Big drama. My dream was most likely a reflection of an increasing reality this week of troubleshooting and responsive problem solving related to our gardens.

We entered our Tranquila garden a couple days ago to discover hoof sized indents over many of our garden beds. Tranquila is more like a nursery than a garden, with many fragile seedlings and still germinating seeds that still haven’t woken from their slumber. The vacas (cows) had busted through a weak area of fencing (now fortified with 3 higher courses of well anchored barbed wire) and found, fortunately, that little in our fledgling garden was to their liking…..other than all the black bean seedlings and most of the one inch tall amaranth and quinoa plants.

My heart hurt as I cleaned up their damage, especially since I had spent the morning ‘saving’ our first flowering and fruiting tomato plants from hornworm caterpillars, hand picking them off and dumping them in a bucket of soapy water. It felt a bit like we were under siege by nature. I was reminded of the wild setting for which we are attempting to grow our food. We are trying to domesticate nature. I like to feel that rather than a bending of nature to our will. We are in communion with it. This connection is the essence of producing home grown food that is chemical-free, nutrient dense, and, also, doesn’t have a negative impact on the environment.

Nature reminded us this week that it is ultimately uncontrollable. If we get a good harvest of any of our vegetables, it is nature’s desire even as it is also due to our skill and responsiveness (and sourcing good, quality heirloom seeds and deeply efforted compost.) Instead of getting hugely upset at the cow damage, I surrendered to it and immediately noticed something interesting. All of the beds that the vacas had left their marks on were ones that I had planned to replant or change in some way. Every one. The black beans were spaced too close together (something I learned after watching our frijoles negroes in the Rio Garden get bushier and bushier), so I was able to replant and respace them. I wanted to create rows of amaranth and quinoa rather than scattering the seed as I had done originally, so I could see them better as well as be able to provide mulch around the rows. Now I could do that while still preserving seedlings that had survived.

So nature created more work in some ways, but, also, it worked out in the end for the best. It is difficult to get too stressed about anything here on the ranch as resourcefulness and responsiveness just seem to come more naturally than in the western, more industrialized world. Every crisis has a solution and doesn’t push up the same levels of stress and anxiety as the common workplace drama.

We are entering the season of Kali. Kali represents death and rebirth; cycles of change and transformation; temperamental weather and emotional patterns. I was reminded of this also as I felt the edges of how easy it would be for all of our ‘hard work’ on the gardens to be wiped out by animals, a strong storm, or a swarm of damaging insects.

When we get our food from the grocery store, we have no sense of this fragility or of our fortune either. We fill our shopping carts and drive food that has been imported from all over the world home to be stored in our cabinets and fridges. Here on the ranch, because we don’t have refrigeration (other than two zeer evaporative cooling pots) and the nearest grocery store is 90 minutes away, food harvest and preservation is a concentrated and connected activity.

We picked some bok choy cabbage leaves today intending to use them for cabbage rolls for dinner tonight. I share the recipe below. No fossil fuels or chemicals were needed (not for working the soil, the fertilizer, the ‘pest control,’ the harvesting, the packaging or transport!); just our labor, our love, and our time. When we eat our cabbage rolls tonight, this energy will come through and increase our enjoyment and appreciation. Nature does make a better partner (however unpredictable), than slave.

Harvest this week and recipes: Daikon radish, mizuna (asian lettuce), arugula, tatsoi (asian cabbage), bok choy, kale, and cilantro

Right now is about greens and lettuces. Mizuna and arugula are braving the heat to produce leaves of nutritional goodness. Bok choy, tatsoi, and kale provide earthy flavor and plenty of antioxidants. They are so welcome since greens and most lettuce are not sold here in most tiendas in Mexico, only iceberg lettuce and traditional cabbage. Faced with a harvest of greens, we came up with two vegetarian recipes that used them in way that was beyond the usual stir fry and ensalada.

Bok Choy Cabbage Rolls-

Cabbage Rolls:

Eight to Ten large bok choy or kale leaves (two per person), the leaves need to be 3 by 4 inches

one cup of cooked brown or wild rice

one cup of TVP (or tempeh), add one cup of hot water and stir together

one half daikon radish, chopped

stems of bok choy leaves (if using), chopped

cilantro, cumin, soy sauce to taste

Asian Sauce:

Combine half a cup of soy sauce, 2 tablespoons olive oil, 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar, 1 tablespoon sesame seeds, one garlic clove minced, chili powder to taste

Bring to boil a couple inches of water in a pot with a steamer basket. Combine TVP, rice, and chopped daikon in a bowl and add seasonings to taste. Heat stuffing ingredients over medium heat until TVP is cooked and rice is heated. Lay out bok choy or other greens leaf by leaf being careful not to tear them. Place the leaf length wise in front of you and fill it with the stuffing just along the middle along the spine of the leaf. Don’t overstuff as it needs to be easy to fold without tearing. Fold the side closest to you first and then the two top and bottom edges go in and then roll it the rest of the way (similar to a burrito). Place the rolls carefully in a steamer basket for three to five minutes. Serve with the asian sauce on the side.

Eggs In A Nest-

This recipe has been modified from one provided in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. This is an insightful and inspiring book about a famous author who ate only foods produced from her own garden and locally grown for one year.

2 cups uncooked brown rice

Olive oil

medium onion, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, minced

carrots, chopped

daikon radish, chopped

1 very large bunch of bok choy, kale, chard or other leafy green

8 eggs (if you need to make more eggs because you have more people just poach extras in another pan)

soy sauce, cumin, and salt to taste

Cook rice with four cups of water in a covered pot while other ingredients are being prepared. Saute onion and garlic in olive oil in a wide skillet until lightly golden. Mix in carrots and daikon radish and cook for a few minutes. Add greens and cook with the pan covered for a few more minutes. Uncover, stir well, then use the back of a spoon to make depressions in the cooked leaves, circling the pan like numbers on a clock. Break an egg into each depression, being careful to keep yolks whole. Cover pan again and allow eggs to poach for 3 to 10 minutes depending on how runny you like them. Remove from heat and serve over rice with guacamole salsa (or without).

Guacamole Salsa-

2 large ripe avocados, seed removed

8 tomatillos (or omit if you don’t have them and substitute with another tomato)

1 red tomato

handful of cilantro

Juice from one lime or lemon

half a jalapeno or tablespoon of chili powder or omit if you don’t like spicy foods

cumin and salt to taste

Boil tomatillos for five minutes or until soft. Combine them in a food processor with the other ingredients until mostly smooth. Serve chilled and is best if used within the hour.

Jelelle Awen is co-creator and facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Go here to connect with Jelelle on facebook. Visit the SoulFullHeart website  for more information about virtual sessions with her.

Brace for Impact: Life at El Rancho

Published on by Jelelle AwenLeave a comment

 brace for impact

By Jelelle Awen

“The most difficult thing we have to do in order to survive the coming crash is to renounce the life of artificial luxury that has been the temporary product of the systematic destruction of our life support systems.” – Brace For Impact, Thomas Lewis

Renouncing a life of artificial luxury. Yes, I can relate to that. And especially the word, ‘artificial’. Artificial luxuries compared to natural luxuries. Artificial luxuries need to be attained, maintained, and possessed. Natural luxuries arise to be experienced and cannot really be owned. Artificial luxuries are temporary while natural ones are enduring. Maybe it’s as simple as artificial luxuries are man-made and natural ones….well, they are natural.

Systemic destruction of our life support systems. In every way that is imaginable, humans are indeed destroying the very things that are vital for our survival. That we can do this for so little reward or benefit (beyond the very artificial and temporary luxury of money attainment) would be baffling without the picture of the false self and its evolution. The false self, in a way, is an artificial luxury, created by modern, egoic circumstances that require a strategic, self image-based, money-focused, and non-vulnerable way of relating to the world. The false self developed as a core defensive structure that is a product of an industrialized environment.

I recently read Brace For Impact by Thomas Lewis again. Thomas Lewis has a beautiful generalist mind, able to analyze and present information without mentally getting bogged down too much in the details or needing to ‘prove his case’. He presents a compelling and inspiring argument for inevitable collapse of industrial society due to the areas of water scarcity, peak oil production, industrial agriculture and meat production, global climate change-related weather events, political corruption, economic unsustainability and much more. Reading this book is to have your eyes opened, your heart hurting, your gut aching, and your initiative charging. The last chapter about the urgency of finding an off grid, rural, safe sanctuary and learning ‘back to basics’ homesteading skills was particularly validating to me related to the choices I and three others have made recently moving to an off-grid ranch in Mexico.

While it was immensely validating, I felt there was a missing piece in the writing. Thomas Lewis talks eloquently about what is happening, but less succinctly about why it is happening. He offers a picture of addiction to money and to greed that feels true, but without a specific sense of why this addiction has been necessary. We feel that all addictions have unfelt emotional congestion at their roots. The addiction is an outward manifestation of an inner need going unmet and unfelt. If money subconsciously represents love and how we feel about it (which I feel is true after coaching and facilitating people around their ‘money issues’), then the need for love is the biggest one that is going unmet in all the money accumulation that is leading to so much destruction of our planet and ourselves. It is our disconnection from our deep need for love that manifests into acting without love toward other humans, animals, and the living planet.

In my experience of the last ten years of healing my own false self and others, I ultimately hold the false self with equal parts love and challenge. Love invites the false self into authentic expression through nourishing and real experience of the love it never knew that it always needed. Challenge holds the false self accountable to keep being vulnerable, surrendering to the growing authentic self, and letting go of things (such as artificial luxuries) that keep it falsely powerful.

The loving challenge our false selves are being offered at this time in modern history is to shift very significantly our lifestyles to sustainable, authentic, and love-based ones. If our false selves are unwilling to shift or to even see that there are very compelling reasons to shift, then there is little to be offered by me or anyone else about the coming collapse and how to survive it. For those that are ready to shift and also see that there is an absolute necessity to do so, I invite them to feel how it is their false self that has feelings of resistance, doubt, trepidation, and fear of change. It is the false self that is attached to artificial luxuries and it takes a lot of natural luxuries such as love and the bounty and magic offered by nature for them to let it go.

The first time I read Brace For Impact, I was still living in Canada in a fairly comfortable life, although I had already started letting go of many things. Reading the book inspired me greatly to keep going with my search for a sanctuary and to actually make the move to living off grid in Mexico. There was little to no resistance inside of me (no real false self protest) to letting go of the artificial luxuries that I’ve known my whole life. And, I am now experiencing in my daily life that I can not only survive without them; I am thriving in deeply nourishing ways that bring me back to the luxuries that only nature and living an authentic life can bring.

Jelelle Awen is co-creator and facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Go here to connect with Jelelle on facebook. Visit the SoulFullHeart website  for more information about virtual sessions with her.

Building The Ark: Life At El Rancho

Published on by Jelelle AwenLeave a comment

By Jelelle Awen

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The ark is about learning what I don’t know; remembering what my soul knows; and using my intuition to feel out the rest.

I have felt like Noah at times; holding a prophecy of a big storm coming and making plans and taking actions to survive that storm. Like Noah, with some foresight and surrender to the Divine, doing something for which most of the culture is not understanding or seeing. My version of the ark was my passenger van and the human and dog companions that came along with me on the journey from Canada to here in Mexico are as treasured as the pairs of animals saved to repopulate the earth. We landed here in our ark on the shores of what feels like our safe sanctuary. A place where water flows not from city taps but from natural springs. A place where exotic fruit grows year round from trees. A place where no insulation is needed on homes or on bodies. A place where having no electricity or refrigeration is not a big inconvenience but a manageable work around. A place where many people ride horses to get around and cars are just another option. A place where traffic slowdown is caused by a swarm of cows not frustrated commuters.

The storm is growing, building strength in the skies of the world. These are dim skies to me right now; they feel far away from the daily realities here on the ranch. But, I can feel the thunder rumbles of war in ISIL occupied areas and the Ukraine; in the economic contentions of European nations faced with growing debt that can’t be repaid; in oil price fluctuations due to diminishing reserves and bubbles bursting fracking empires; in the diminishing fresh water resources around the world and especially the southeastern United States. And maybe the lightning from these events is still far off and hasn’t charred the ground and struck near or in your world. But, as so many people have foretold, the storm that will end this industrial age as we know it is coming. Whether in ten days or ten months or ten years, the world as it being run and experienced right now just isn’t sustainable in any kind of long term picture.

We’ve become so out of touch with our intrinsic nature as hunters and gathers and growers. Becoming so out of touch has made us disconnected about where our food comes from, how it is grown, how it is treated (in the case of animals), how chemicals are used on it, and how synthetic or natural it is. Becoming so out of touch has made us easy victims for the storm that is coming. Rather than being able to tough it out relying on ancient instincts of survival, so many people will be unable to respond in any way that is beyond feeling helpless, hopeless, and immobilized. Many people, sadly, will simply end their own lives rather than have to find the will to survive in a world without all the easy conveniences that they are used to.

This last week has felt like another phase of ark building. The ark this time isn’t about transport to sanctuary; it’s about reconnecting with my human instinct and imprint for feeding myself. The ark now, for me, is about growing my own organic food and incorporating what grows here on the ranch already into my diet, even if I’m not familiar with it. The ark is about learning what I don’t know; remembering what my soul knows; and using my intuition to feel out the rest.

We have all been building this ark with dedication, getting up by the rooster’s call at six am to work at Tranquila, our third garden space here at the ranch. Tranquila is described in much more detail here. We’ve put in five or six hours a day during the hardscaping and shaping of earth phase that is required to sculpt raw earth into a garden space. This is the laying out of floor and wall boards, pounding in of nails process of building our ark. And inside of the ark, instead of just animals, there are beans, tomatoes, quinoa, buckwheat, amaranth, and much more. Inside of the ark is true self sustainability and connection back with a primal instinct that has been numbed by easy living.

As I watered the gardens in Tranquila for the third time today, I felt how I don’t resonate with the idea of being a gardener. For me, it’s not about being something outside of who I am just because I am growing seeds, tending them, harvesting them, and eating them. I am not a gardener; I am a human. A human reclaiming the inner gardening abilities inherent in my soul and embraced by my heart.

Jelelle Awen is co-creator and facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Go here to connect with Jelelle on facebook. Visit the SoulFullHeart website  for more information about virtual sessions with her.

Fire Among The Ashes: A Mid-Life Awakening

Published on by Gabriel HeartmanLeave a comment

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By Christopher Tydeman

I am typing this on New Year’s Eve 2014. A typical time for reflection. It is also a few weeks before my birthday. Those two events always elucidate a form of taking stock and evaluation. They just happen to be really close in proximity for me. A double dose in this case. I find that to be a blessing in the moment. It signifies something big for me. I know that time is just an illusion, but to a part of me it has much relevance as a marker or a yard stick. If I hold it with a larger context then this part of me doesn’t get mired in the content of what didn’t happen this year or what should happen in the following year of my life.

I was staring at a bed of coals from a campfire. The burning embers were glowing with their hot orange and red hue while surrounded by the dead gray ash of the previous flame. It was like looking at a pulsating heart in the middle of a dying body. As each moment passed the life of the fire became smaller and smaller until it would eventually merge with its lifeless surroundings. There was a message or a metaphor in that for me.

I am entering a new phase of my life. A completely new life to be honest. I am no longer a part of the old structure and conditioning I was used to for 43 years. I am in a foreign country with basic yet emerging language skills, a dwindling fiat currency supply, and, at present, no generation of future funds. This couldn’t be farther than what I was taught to believe was the “right” way to live life at this age. I “should” have a house. I “should” have a career. I “should” be planning for my retirement. As I sit from where I am, that just feels like the ashes surrounding the hot coals. The death that smothers the fire of passion, desire, and life itself.

Many would call this a mid-life crisis. I would prefer to call it a mid-life awakening. An opportunity to take back what was given to me by the Divine Itself. The power and choice to live a life of freedom, self-reliance, and joy. Not some fabricated, name-brand, “this is what makes everyone else happy” type of bullshit. But authentic, down to nature, human to human, self to self type of contact. Life is not an Easy Bake Oven for Christ’s sakes. But it’s not torture either. It’s a daily round of the ebb and flow of hard work and rest. Of desire and surrender. Of challenge and ease. Of getting to the guts of what really matters while eating a plate of home grown vegetables. Anything else is just corporate politics trying to sell you a life they convinced you was better than the one that God gave you.

I don’t have any clue what will happen this coming year. Hell, I don’t have a clue what will happen next month for that matter. Before my deconditioning, I could more or less guess what my life would be like one year to the next. Work would be the same. Daily routines would be the same. Even the unknown parts would be planned and then made known. My sustenance would be easy and never be in question. I would spend my “free” time trying to forget that I wasn’t free at all.

But now each day is an unknown adventure. I am helping to grow our own food by creating a rich soil foundation and utilizing limited space to produce an abundance of nutrition. I am learning Spanish by fumbling my way through understanding and speaking. I am beginning to make connections with others who live in a nearby community to help strengthen a bond of genuine respect and collaboration. I am continuing to delve deeper into my own being, both emotional and spiritual, through my daily relations with my SoulFullHeart family. As I type this, I realize how rich my life really is in comparison to what it was.

Interesting. So the less I know, the richer life becomes. The more I know, the duller. There is a wisdom here in Mexico that eludes the rest of industrial society. Life doesn’t happen later, it exists now. In the moment. Anything that happens has a solution, one way or another, at some point. It will get taken care of and life will continue while you enjoy your cerveza. People will take care of one another, even if they don’t know you. There is always something to share with each other, even if it is a smile and an “Hola”. I am honored and proud to be in Mexico in my next life journey. I don’t know what happens this coming year and I am okay with that. I am here now. I am enjoying this paradise I co-alchemized. I look forward to sharing it with others, to help them feel what it is that they truly want in their lives. For a moment to let go of all they have been trying to be and allow themselves to be just as they are . . . a fire among the ashes.

Christopher Tydeman is a SoulFullHeart facilitator. Visit soulfullheart.com for more information.

Living “As If” Collapse Is Coming

Published on by Jelelle AwenLeave a comment

mexico

By Jillian Vriend

Today, finally, I feel somewhat settled. After more than a month of travelling and short stays in various places, we are landed in a place that feels temporary yet stable. We repeat to each other, “We are renting an apartment in Mexico,” just to let in the reality a bit deeper. It feels like we are parked at the mouth of the river, waiting to (literally) begin the journey down it to hopefully claim our piece of sanctuary at an ecovillage located on 700 acres about one hour from here. There are still some unknowns about how it will all unfold, but inside of me it feels like we have found home. We have been claimed by life and by others here in a way that feels warm and welcoming.

Kathleen writes vulnerably about our experiences during the last five weeks in her two exodus journal entries here and here. Ups and downs. Ebbs and flows. Moments of joy and goodness. Moments of pain and constriction. The joy moments seeming to be impossible to occur without the constrictions and vice versa. For me, always there has been a deeper trust that everything would be all right and that we had been guided by the Divine to journey this far. Even when those around us were doubtful, critical, and, in one case, even cruel about expressing their skepticism about the way we were responding to our decision to come here….I still felt a sense that our trust and surrender to follow guidance would draw everything we desired.

We didn’t take years to plan the move here. Christopher and Wayne especially had been feeling the rumblings of industrial collapse coming for many years, yet our trajectories in the last several years have been around focusing on our emotional and spiritual health and deconstructing our false selves. When we gave up our residence (and the $1600 a month rent associated with it) and moved into an RV in January of this year, we felt we were on the right track. It was surrendering to Mother’s flow, but it wasn’t known what would unfold for us after that decision. The campground felt temporary with an energy of inflow and outflow of visitors with even the permanent residents feeling like they could move on at any moment. We liked this energy for awhile; it was freeing after committing to year long rental leases and feeling the noose of mortgages around so many people’s necks.

In June, I felt clear guidance that it was time to feel into leaving the campground and Canada altogether. I just didn’t feel like I wanted to go through another Canadian winter and I asked Wayne and Christopher, “Where would you go if you could go anywhere?” A rhetorical question, for sure, yet also, for the first time we really could go anywhere. Our daughter was an adult and completely independent. The painting contracting business Wayne had run for 30 years felt that it was at a completion. We hadn’t drawn new people to SoulFullHeart on the Sunshine Coast despite our efforts to hold talks and connect with local people. We could go anywhere that our desires would lead us.

Their answer was clear and quick, “Somewhere warm. Somewhere in the southern hemisphere. Somewhere we can get to by car.” These answers were fueled by desire for warm weather, yet, also, our sense of impending collapse was growing. I felt very clear guidance that in the next year major events would most likely take place that could make it impossible to leave Canada. Canada itself didn’t feel sustainable with its short growing seasons and deep reliance on fossil fuels and false self-based infrastructure. We wanted to live in a place where the local people lived more simply, more sustainably, and where there was a long growing season. We felt into various places in Central America and finally decided on Mexico, mostly because three of us had been here before and were somewhat familiar with it.

Mexico. I am falling in love with Mexico. It is a dance, just like in romance. It feels so foreign in moments- the concrete homes, the Spanish language, the accordion-heavy music, the dogs that wander free, the lack of self image.Yet it feels like home too. I love the way that life comes first here and work comes second. Every business seems to be run out of someone’s home so that the gap between the two is even less. They inhabit every square inch of their homes here, no matter how humble the dwelling is. Home is where the heart is here, yes. There are moments of culture shock, where I feel a rub inside of me after searching for anything comfortable or familiar and finding nothing. Dimly lit and un-air conditioned grocery stores. High heat plus humidity that seems almost hostile in its relentlessness. There is the challenge of being vegan, saying ‘no queso or carne’ over and over and getting confused looks back from waiters. Just like romance, the back and forths provide depth to the lust, to the desire that brings us here.

One desire, our desire for land, is strong. To grow seeds. To harvest and to eat of our own labors. This is the one thing that feels sane in a world that has become insane from fossil fuel addiction. Even here, in a state where so much produce is grown, many locals go to the grocery store still. Then comes the truck driven by local farmers full of watermelons or papayas or lemons…announcing over a loud speaker their price….and affordable freshness is in your hand and soon in your belly. Still, now, we are buying our food but soon, we hope, in the next six months or so, we will be eating mostly only what we grow. Is this a naive vision? Have we not planned well enough? Are we fools?

What feels naive and foolish to us is those who do nothing to become more sustainable, those who continue to live fossil fuel dependent lives without awareness, those who dream but do not follow their dreams because they need to earn money to keep their disatisfying lifestyles afloat, those who stay so busy that they cannot let in joy and breathing. Those who will most tragically and certainly die in the coming collapse if they do not change their lifestyles very soon.

And, even if we are wrong about the timing of collapse, why not live ‘as if’ it is a real possibility? Why not make changes to live more sustainably, including growing your own food, living off the grids of city electricity and water, living in community providing support and connection, letting go of false self attachments, healing your heart and soul? Why not truly experience your life in every moment rather than medicating with false food in so many forms?

We have jumped off a cliff into the unknown…and found that there is a river at the bottom that catches and submerges us. A river that is made of love and trust and surrender and courage. A river that has an unimaginable depth and a steady current…taking us onward and around the next bend and the next toward a destination where anything is possible.

Jillian Vriend is co-creator of SoulFullHeart, parts work facilitator, author of a  book about connecting with the Divine Mother and on this blog, and sacred humanity-Divine Feminine teacher.

On Mother Earth Day: Digesting The Reality Of Climate Crisis

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

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By Wayne Vriend

Recently I took in three powerful and difficult to digest pieces about the climate crisis. It seems fitting to share them today, on Mother Earth Day.

The first is a writers’ recollection, who lived nearby Chernobyl of the days and hours following the meltdown:

http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/Blogs/2372899/chernobyl_the_biting_wind_the_silent_scream.html

and the second is Guy Mcpherson’s climate chaos you tube video from last year about how it’s most likely that we will experience a near extinction level climate crisis events by 2040.

And the third piece: RT released a piece on Chernobyl released on the 28th year anniversary (and it is part of the currently troubled Ukraine, no less!)

http://rt.com/news/155072-chernobyl-images-now-then/?utm_source=browser&utm_medium=aplication_chrome&utm_campaign=chrome

My god, I’m trying to digest how momentous a time we are in – RIGHT NOW – and let it in from the divine mother’s heart and urgency…

The piece from Chernobyl shows how the authorities react to any bad news in which it always justifies lying to the masses as the lesser of two perceived evils. We are in just such a time as that, but on a much bigger scale.

The other big piece I feel is how we collectively don’t have a way to digest this emotionally and spiritually, so we just haven’t digested it, (which is different somehow than flat out denial.)

Guy’s presentation is a lot of facts, and some context at the end. It beckons the heart and the soul to respond. The response is about accepting the earth as ‘in hospice’, rather than writing a letter to your congressman or member of parliament.

Mark me down for convinced, (though I struggle to know what that actually means). The world as we know bears little resemblance to the world that is emerging in the days, weeks, months and years immediately upon us.

Soulfullheart was born for such a time as this and I must admit, I am curious as hell as to how and if that will actually play out.

Wayne Vriend is co-creator and a facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Visit soulfullheart.com for more information.