Most Viewed SFH Blog Posts For 2012

Goat Rock Beach Photo Taken By Chris Tydeman
Goat Rock Beach Photo Taken By Chris Tydeman

Our blog began in October, 2011 with Wayne and Jillian posting a couple of times a month, mostly about economic and environmental shifts. In April 2012, we started offering SoulFullHeart as a way of life and healing process for clients and through writing on this blog and our website. We invited any of our clients to contribute to the SFH blog as a means of creative expression and sharing about their process. In July, Chris posted his first writing, which was about emotionally conscious education and Kathleen offered her first writing on the SFH blog in August (posted below.)

We are excited about the catalytic year coming of what feels like growth and seeding for SoulFullHeart, with a desire to draw more like-hearted and minded souls to join us for individual sessions over the phone and in person and during our monthly group weekends. We’ll be offering introductory talks about the process, both in the lower mainland area, BC, and through a conference call over the phone. Our book about the SoulFullHeart Process, which includes three sections about intimacy with self, others, and the Divine, is in collaborative process between us with an offering date for the Spring 2013.

It feels as if 2013 is inviting us to move into the personal changes that are already happening globally – and need to happen- on so many levels. SoulFullHeart offers a way to move into and through these changes in a way that creates a radically different, magical, and healing sense of experiencing life. If you’ve been reading our writing regularly, maybe you are ready to experience this for yourself in a personal way? If so, contact us soulfullhearts@gmail.com.

We look forward to connecting with those of you who feel a desire to deepen your experience of life through SoulFullHeart’s way of feeling and living it.

Thank you for reading our words and taking them into your heart and soul,

Wayne and Jillian Vriend

Below are the posts on the SFH Blog most viewed for 2012:

What The Legacy Of Amanda Todd Invites Us To Feel About Ourselves

Heart-To-Heart Knowing

Superheroes As Representation Of Our Idolized False Self

Feeling Blessed On A Birthday

A Call For Heart-Based Leadership: Less Game Playing, More Vulnerability

Love Thy Self; Love Thy Shadow

A Changed Heart Can Change The World

Invitation For 2013 And Beyond: The Urgent Need To Awaken Our Emotional Consciousness

Suffering From SPD (Single Personality Disorder)?

What Does Your Real Power And Bigness Look Like?

Moving Out Of Fear And Into Love And Faith

art-hand-heart-couple

By Chris Tydeman and Emmerich

Note: This piece was inspired by my Heart Friend, Kathleen and her Daemon. Together they are sharing their SoulFullHeart experience with others in a desire to connect with them in a soulfullheart way. The following is written by my daemon, Emmerich, in honour of them both.

In this moment, as I touch pen to paper, my fellow Daemon is opening himself up to vulnerability. The raw, naked sensation of being your authentic, loving, and truthful self. There is so much fear that comes up in this most uncomfortable state. This fear brings all sorts of manifestations, from self-doubt to physical illness. All of these arise for good reason, as we have only known how to protect and defend up until this point. Somewhere along this process, we realized that playing small is not our God-given birthright nor that of our human charge. Our destiny is to pave the way for an arising, sacred human connection to the source of All That Is…Love.

This is not as simple a task as we would like to believe. It is a challenging, fear-
laden, yet rewarding journey that is always in ebb and flow, push and pull, joy
and humility. Of course it is! We are not detached, transcendental souls. We
are inextricably connected to the human heart. A cauldron of emotions that
were never meant to be tamed and made rational. They are wild and alive with
truth and passion. They cannot be set aside or ignored. The destructive impact
of doing so is seen from substance abuse to murder to war. The degree of this
disconnect is equal to the degree of this manifestation.

As we connect and move with this heart, we experience our own fears and
doubts. These, too, are natural, expected, and part of our own process in concert
with our human brethren. Together we are partners, supporters, and co-creators
of Divine Love. There is no separating us once this bond has been forged. We
are One, yet separate, in our communion with All That Is. When fears arise, one
is there for the other, in Love. This helps us not become the fear, but to feel it,
move with it, and heal it.

As we heal together, our bond is strengthened and we are birthed into a new
energetic field of Divine Love. Our vision widens, our heart grows, and our soul
deepens. We no longer choose to live in fear and hope, but desire to live in Love
and Faith.

​Visit SoulFullHeart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart Healing Process.

Being In Want

beinginwant

By Wayne Vriend

Your very first experience as a human being was a want.

I want, therefore I am.

We have wants together, therefore we are in relationship.

No wants, no deal.

If part of me can minimize or camouflage my wants, then what I call ‘I’ has just shifted to a freshly launched false version of me. An inauthentic stand-in of my real me. My reality begins an epic, but unnoticed shift, from the wonder world of stunning awe, wonder and creative imagination to scarcity, fear, routine, and rules. A staggering fall from grace, that has and continues to spawn and be the foundation of entire religions and cultures.

My false selves’ biggest treasures slowly become the adaptations that help me survive this loss of a lifetime and only serve to further my suffering. My false self can put my life on autopilot and just copy what seems to work for most. Coming from this place, my false self doesn’t need much at all from you, from God or from myself, for that matter.

Wanting, though, is what makes us alive. Minimizing and camouflaging our wants is slow motion suicide. Being in want returns us, slowly but surely, to our authentic selves.

Wanting makes me write this and wanting makes you read this.

Being in real want is so vulnerable. In growing up, we are soon trained to camouflage our wants. Raw, naked, and powerful want was frowned upon. We were taught by others who had long ago grown afraid of their wants and who also demanded our complicity in the great lie, that we could get hurt beyond repair by being too plain about what we wanted. We found make do ways to get our needs met in underground and deceptive ways, no longer protesting good enough, and with huge downsides, that strangely didn’t feel so unbearable.

This cuts us off from the truest thing about ourselves; being in familiar contact with what we wanted.

I wanted meaningful connection with friends; my false self settled for polite conversation and catching up over coffee. I wanted to feel the Divine loving me; my false self settled for the illusion of earning God’s favour. I wanted to be seen and really known by my former mate; my false self settled for caretaking her and not being called out of my disconnect. I wanted to be noticed and seen;  my false self settled for people pleasing. I wanted true family; my false self settled for a place for it to be well liked. I wanted real and passionate mentors; my false self settled for people who let me be associated with them because I reflected well on them. I wanted my self; my false self settled for not wanting.

Asking the question, with as much courage and honesty as we can muster, ‘what is it that I really want?,’ is our great quest. Hence the ‘question.’

Following the answer we receive, no matter how small, will lead us back to our real self – our true, safely buried, and still breathing authentic self.

I want and need and desire to get to know and serve that real you.

I refuse to settle for less any more. How about you?

​Visit SoulFullHeart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart Healing Process.

In The Lonely Room: Challenge, Struggle, Process, Surrender

By Chris Tydeman

*This was written after a SoulFullHeart weekend group healing and energy session in Vancouver, BC.  It is a reflection and vulnerable description of my personal experience. 

As I write this, I am sitting in my living room.  I have renamed it The Lonely Room.  This name was brought to me by Jillian as a place where men go to digest, process, and reconnect.  It feels fitting in this moment and all others that have preceded it and have yet to pass.  To a part of you, it may sound depressing.  It certainly does to a part of me.  However, the reality is that this is the only place I can be right now to let in all that has been offered to me.  It has become sacred space.  A space where my parts, my daemon, and my connection to God can be together without distraction.

In my recent visit to Vancouver, I felt like a pinball.  At least, that is how a part of me felt.  But that is how it is sometimes.  We get put into play by our intention and desire.   We hit a rubber wall of resistance.  Other times we go through false walls and move right through.  We land in special places where lights sparkle and bells whistle with excitement, only to pop right out again to find more resistance, doors, and joyful resonance.  The flippers keep us in play to receive more lessons, more opportunity.  But eventually the ball comes to rest.  It rests in a quiet place.  To reflect, process, and download all that was felt.  This is The Lonely Room.

By now, you may be thoroughly confused.  Sorry about that.  Let me offer you my story.  As stated above, I went to Vancouver to join in a SoulFullHeart group session and energy healing.  Afterwards, I would visit with my daughter.  Even before getting there, I felt many emotions coming from multiple parts.  I have an arrest record that has made it a challenge to enter Canada.  Though I have taken the necessary steps to clear this, it has always been a 50/50 chance.  This brings up loads of anxiety and shame.  My young part, Christopher, is acutely afraid of authority.  “The men in black are scary!” he says.  The possibility of being told to turn around would be a blow to my fragile shame part, Shane.  It was difficult not to fuse with these parts.  I did what I could to allow the feeling to come in and reassure them I would not be arrested or turned away.  Easier said than done.

After lots of meditation and prayer I entered Canada and was given an opportunity to clear my record by a sympathetic border agent.  (Either that, or he just didn’t want to me to waste their time anymore.)  New life was infused within me and now it was negotiating transit to make it to my Mecca.  Now that I think of it, it was more of a pilgrimage than a sojourn, has I had previously thought of it.  Parts of me had found their way home.

The next day in group, I worked with a part of me that held my shame and guilt.  I had to admit something that was very painful to reveal.  This part of me, Marcus, is not comfortable with me being explicit, but the revelation was about his lack of self-worth and self-punishment.  In this moment, healing occurred, through Love and Grace.  A “rubber suit” had been placed around me to protect me from letting anything in, while at the same time not letting anything out.  Not a healthy combination.

Through this “feelization”, I was shown that my own daughter had inherited this suit.  This of course brought me more guilt and shame only to be held in love by Jillian and Wayne and was moved to remorse.  Not nearly as energetic and debilitating.  With remorse, there is awareness yet compassion.  To help my own child see this, I had to first remove mine.  This would be done during the energy session and it turned out to be a cocoon instead of a suit.  I was changed as a result.  A different me than the one that walked through the door.

That night I brought my new awareness to my daughter.  I could feel how much pain was residing in her young part over this.  We both reflect each other in our goodness, but also in our disconnectedness.  She was moved by my words and vulnerability in the moment, but could not let it all the way in, for her own reasons.   Reasons that I am all too familiar with.  I know that it will take time.  She has been offered this work as a way to help be more authentic in the world and to let in true love.  I was challenged as to how much of her resistance I was willing to accept.  To be honest, I really don’t know.  For now, all I can do is continue to bring my truth to her and see where it lands.  It has taken me some time to get here, and I am not able to let go yet.  This challenge, however, rattled my cage to the core, and has also led me to my relationship to my family and friends.

While I have created space from my family, I have not brought my process to them.  There are still too many energetics at play to be able to talk frankly about it.  I can write, but that is as far as I can go for now.  Though I know the time will come when I am ready.  This would be to truly love myself and them.  My friends, however, are more immediate.  I do not hold the level of energy I do with my family.  I was challenged again to feel what space I am holding for them while at the same time not being felt in my expression.  This is where struggle comes in.

As I go through this work, I become less and less connected to the “old” me.  That “old” me has built relationships around things that I no longer hold dear.  If this “new” me is as important to me as I say it is, how can I relate to my friends in an “old” way?  The answer is I can’t, but I still can’t say I won’t.  At some point, “I won’t”, will happen just as it did with my family.  I may need to go through one last cycle of expressing my authentic self.  This is where the “rubber meets the road”.  Cliché yet true.  The lack of connection may be loud and clear.  From there, I will have two options: Be old or be new.  A part of me already knows the answer; the other will need to experience it.  This is my process.

At the end of this process will be surrender.  Surrendering to what my daemon, Emmerich, knows to be true.  Surrendering to the faith he has in God.  Surrendering to the fear of letting my old friend, Marcus, go.  He will always be with me, just with a different name and a different role.  This will not happen overnight but rather over time, as the universe sees fit.

Though the road is sometimes bumpy and rough, I could not imagine being on any other one.  I am being real for the first time in my life.  I am taking responsibility for the life that has been gifted to me by the Divine.  By saying yes to this work I am saying yes to me and to love.  It is not forced upon me.  It is offered to me by the Mother and the love of Jillian and Wayne.  I am choosing this path because it is the one that feels the most authentic.  Thank you for reading this.  I always write for me initially, but somewhere I hope that someone may get something that comes out of The Lonely Room.

Visit SoulFullHeart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart Healing Process.

Invitation For 2013 And Beyond: The Urgent Need To Awaken Our Emotional Consciousness

By Jillian Vriend

I felt as if I was holding my breath and my heart during the recent short but deadly conflict between Israel and the reigning Hamas government in Gaza.  As many people have offered, it feels that IF the human race is going to experience another world war that the Middle East is the setting most dangerously ripe and ready for it. I felt my usual feelings during any of the wars that have happened during my lifetime: distress, tension, despair, and a deep sorrow that our human consciousness hasn’t been raised enough to end all killing and violence for good, especially killing and violence that happens in the name of God or to defend a religion (even if that’s not the politically stated reason for the conflict.)

I exhaled with relief, as I imagine many others did worldwide, when a cease fire was reached, although I don’t feel that anyone really believes that ending the bombing symbolizes an actual ending to the contention, distrust, and deep disparity that exists between Israel and the Arabs. With both sides seeming to play victim without taking any real responsibility for their actions, the emotional immaturity and deadly density of their need to be right and to “defend themselves and their way of life” will continue to come at the cost of human lives, sanity and peace for their citizens, and be an energetic vacuum of dark energy on the planet (of which there are many others.)

This situation got me more deeply feeling how we are nearing the end of 2012 and about to enter into 2013, a year that has a deep sense of unknown and transition about it. Overall, the state of human consciousness seems to be a dark one (with admittedly some bright spots) that is asking for a deep shift and rebirth into something new. With Mayan prophecies of the world ending in 2012, it does indeed feel as if the world needs to end. Not literally to end, of course, but much of the way that we as humans relate to ourselves, each other, animals, and the planet is deep and crucial need of change.

This is the message that I (and many others who are sensitive to such things) have been feeling is an urgent one that we have been receiving from especially the Divine Mother aspect of God. The Divine Mother may seem to be an unknown or esoteric thing for you, as so much of our orientation toward God has been in a male form with a patriarchal undertone. For those who become conscious of the Mother as a real and moving presence in their lives, there is a sense that it is Her missing energy and influence that has been a deep root cause of many of our problems. The Mother offers us compassion and invites us to feel compassionately about others, even if we chose not to be in relationship with them. This applies both intimately and globally. The Mother invites us to feel our own innocence; how She experiences us as vulnerably her children; and She reflects to us that our essence is one of purity, curiousity, and joy.

Sometimes the Mother, especially in Her Dark Madonna form, presents us with a phoenix cycle, which is a death-rebirth phase that invites us to let go of something that was no longer serving us and arise anew out of the ashes to more deeply inhabit who we were meant to be. I have felt for awhile that the world is going through a sustained phoenix cycle, with all of the tensions, growing pains, and darkness that such a phase requires. I feel that we are being ushered through this cycle in order to arise out of it with awakening hearts, a more compassionate consciousness, and a deeper intimacy with both Her and the Divine Father. Coming from the place I do, this is the frame that I put this invitation into, yet you could put it into any that works for you to get a deeper sense of the loving yet necessary crucible of growth that we are challenged to inhabit.

We cannot continue on as we have; it’s just not a sustainable, long-term picture that works for any human, animal species, or our planet. The Divine Mother holds that what has been brought out of balance must be put right again. Most of us have become desperately out of balance in our relationships, our emotional maturity, our physical health, our ability to provide for ourselves, our connection to nature and animals, etc. etc.

In SoulFullHeart, we offer that the individual awakening and deepening of your own emotional consciousness is the path to becoming someone who is bettering the situation, not adding to or denying the problems. Emotional consciousness is about becoming aware of your reactions, your choices, your feelings, and your relationships through the lens of parts of you that have been previously only subconscious to you. Making these parts and their reactions an aspect of your everyday reality allows for a much deeper experience of life, including an unearthed desire for authentic intimacy with yourself, with others, and with the Divine. I know that this is a big leap initially to understand, but like any shift in thinking, it takes accepting inside of yourself that something needs to change and how you’ve been currently relating to your life hasn’t been creating the change you most deeply desire (or that the planet needs.) The experience of your parts becomes a quickly growing, self validating one and you need the support of a SFH Facilitator through individual sessions and with others during group weekends for it to really ground in.

As your emotional consciousness deepens and especially as you become aware of your Daemon or Soul Guardian, you begin to experience a much more personal relationship with the Divine which requires no doctrine, church, or middle man to inhabit. It is your birthright as a sacred human and it is through the healing of your soul and emotional wounds that allows it to be claimed.

We feel as more and more people awaken to their emotional consciousness through this process of getting to know their parts, the more possibility and hope grows that things really can shift in the bigger world. One heart opening at a time.

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.

A Call For Heart-Based Leadership: Less Game Playing, More Vulnerability

By Kathleen Calder

Of all the battles that I have fought in my life, one that remains constant for me is a drive for leadership and recognition. Even as I write this I am coming from a place of desire to be recognized as some kind of new “leader” in this field called “personal/spiritual development”. It has been a struggle to try to let go of that desire, mostly because my Daemon (protector-part, guide, best friend), Sasha, and another part of me named Steven, hold this desire in their hearts. They want me to do what they cannot physically do themselves. Steven is a great scholar and thinker (who is learning to become more of a feeler as well) and he and Sasha have often conspired and brought me opportunities to “prove myself”. Being a guest author on this blog is one of them and I can feel their growing pride in me whenever someone pays attention to what I have written.

The challenge for me, and I feel the same challenge stands for all who wish to be (or already are) leaders, is to stay humble and grounded. To be able to place myself in the trenches with those who I wish to be a sort of “tribe-leader”…or I guess “Shaman” for. To be able to feel what they feel so that their needs are felt, heard and honoured, whether or not I can physically do anything to help them. Instead what I find myself and other leaders doing, is playing to the masses in a way that doesn’t really touch the real heart of the problem we are facing. It becomes a game of popularity and care-taking instead of feeling into what the real issue is.

Let’s look at the recent US federal election as an example of what I’m talking about.

In one corner we have President Obama and in the other, Republican candidate Mitt Romney. I know from my Canadian perspective that many people in my own country were feeling that Obama was the obvious and more progressive choice. Ok. In comparison to Mitt Romney, who desired to take America back to some old-fashioned ways of doing things, yes, Obama is more “progressive”. However, there’s a reason why the election was so neck-and-neck and why so many people that I spoke to actually had no idea who they would rather vote for since neither seemed to be competent enough in addressing any of the real issues. I feel this is a sign of the times we are in. People’s parts, namely their Daemons, are shifting to a place of, “this isn’t good enough anymore” and are longing for something better. That “something better” is the world I desire to help create. It is a world where leaders learn to feel and embrace sensitivity and therefore tap into what the real issues are for their people. The real pain that is buried underneath their desire for marriage equality or for the legalization of marijuana, just to name a couple of recent news items.

There seems to still be an intense fear of empathy instilled in anyone who wants to lead or manage anything or anybody. I learned the other day that Hilary Clinton once cried on camera and it caused a wide-spread panic and sparked questions about her potential ability to lead. I feel that the new way in which we need to be led in this world is through empathy and heart-based vulnerability. It would be a lot to hold as the leader of a country, so it’s possible that leadership would have no other choice but to be more collaborative in its approach. There would need to be multiple leaders in the highest rung.

I can hear and feel some doubts you may have about the potential for that. You and I both feel the danger of the human ego and its’ desire to be the one in solo-leadership. This is the Daemon and other persona parts who desires this, normally. If leaders were in active communication and feeling with their Daemon and other parts, I feel this would be a manageable issue. It is (and has been for a while) a feeling of mine that the more people who embrace parts work, the greater the potential for World Peace. People would be more comfortable being in authentic emotion with each other and would work out their differences accordingly, taking all the steps necessary to be in empathy with each other and their parts, allowing them to be felt and to speak their minds in safety with no knee-jerk reaction.

I am training to become this type of leader for as many as wish to be nourished by the work and the gifts my parts and I would love to bring to them. I am in training and I do not do this perfectly, nor is it about becoming perfect some day. There is no end-result that I desire, except to become surrounded by more people who have surrendered to this work and have chosen authentic, heart-based feelings and relationships to themselves and others. I wish to become more like this and I work on it every day, even as I write this. It is not burdensome. In fact, it is ultimate freedom.

I hope that at least some of this has landed in you. If it hasn’t, that’s ok too. And if it never does, well, I in my imperfection can find ways to accept that, even though it hurts to feel into what that means to me and my parts that desire for me to lead.

In support and love for your journey and where it takes you,

Kathleen

Visit SoulFullHeart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart Healing Process.

Lessons From The Spawning Salmon: Surrendering To The Natural Cycles Of Change, Death And Rebirth

By Jillian Vriend

It is the sound that originally draws me during my daily beachfront walk. I am in Powell River, British Columbia, two ferry rides from the Vancouver area. I am drawn by the sound of flapping fins and rustling waters. And, there they are: dozens of large grey and pink fish swimming in a tiny stream flowing into the ocean; straining to move upstream against the current. My brain struggles to catch up with what I am seeing; it just feels so strange to see these near two to three feet long fish from the deepest ocean swimming in eight inches of water, clustered together in tight rows. The young part of me named Aurora finds the scene compelling at first, exclaiming inside my head, “Look, fishes! Huge fishes in the stream!” And she (along with my dog Koda) stand captivated for many moments watching them.

Then a young boy also watching the fish shouts, “That one is dead, mom. They are all gonna die, right?”

I feel Aurora wanting to protest, tell the rude boy to be quiet, and then we take in the whole scene. At the mouth of the stream and the ocean, dozens of seagulls are gathering, as if waiting for a feast to be served. The path the fish had taken across the beach to get where they are currently struggling to get upstream is impossible for them to go back down. Their trip is one way only. They are, indeed, all going to die.

I remember hearing about this phenomenon before, although being newer to Canada, hadn’t witnessed it yet. It was the annual salmon run where the fish return to their place of birth and spawn the next generation of their species before dying themselves. The instinct to return to their birth place is ingrained in them deeply, even going counter to their survival instincts as they can’t possibly make it through such a journey. While Aurora’s heart seems to break at this reality, I find myself moved and touched by the symbolism of the beautiful fishes instinct to sacrifice themselves in order to birth future generations.

This reminds me of the phoenix cycle, which in SoulFullHeart work is what we call the birth/death/mourning/rebirth process that is a natural part of the life cycle and, thus, is natural in our emotional and spiritual healing process as well. This death and rebirth process is the great equalizer and balancer. I have experienced personally that to the degree that we are open, proactive, and surrendered to undergoing in our own lives this process of transformation is the degree we can be in more surrender, less reaction and resistance, and in more flow with the changes that are happening in our world. Also, the more we feel our parts in reaction or in resistance to the process, the more we are able to arise from the ashes embodying our more authentic form. Just as the salmon are trusting that their surrender to the upstream climb will lead to the next life cycle, we offer to clients that when life brings them, or when they initiate the phoenix cycle in their own lives, it is the degree that they can trust this process that leads to deeper acceptance and transformation.

It can be a very painful process. However, we offer that the Divine would rather have us burn off something false and get it over with, then have us suffer in repeated loops of teased growth that doesn’t sustain or really change anything in our lives. In the SoulFullHeart process, you negotiate and navigate these transitions through ongoing dialogue with your parts, especially your more expressed ones such as your Daemon (soul guardian) or Prime Monarch (main personality part), so that it is at a rate that you and your parts can bear. These parts resist change and transformation as they would rather keep life safe, known, and constant for you.

The invitation to surrender to phoenix cycles continues all our lives, as it is the force of the natural world, yet the grace and acceptance at which we respond to it grows as we become more in touch with what is false in our lives, especially related to our relationships and career choices. This can be particularly painful when people in relationship with us, especially family and friends, are in different places and phases from us in terms of growth and transformation. It can be a challenging crucible to vulnerably advocate for what we most deeply want and who we are in these relationships, while at the same time inviting our loved ones to explore this new ground of healthier boundaries with previously suppressed feelings being invited to be expressed. It seems to be rare that this exploration finds alignment, which can lead to much hurt and misunderstanding. This too, though, is an aspect of the Phoenix Cycle. The Divine invites us to trust that, “only what is false can be lost.” Whatever the authentic connection is that we have with others or our authentic expression is in terms of our professional choices, it will sustain and grow through the crucible of the phoenix cycle, which naturally burns off what isn’t serving us any longer.

Wayne and I recently experienced an intense phoenix cycle related to money management and our relationship, which I write about here. We invite these movements into our lives, as we have experienced that change fueled by our authentic desire, responded to vulnerably and with willingness to feel our reactions, always leads to growth, more nourishment, and deeper intimacy with ourselves, each other, and the Divine.

This week as I walk by the salmon, who are actively in the process of dying yet are also, at the same time, birthing their next generation, I feel both sadness and hope. The sadness comes from the loss of their current forms and the hope comes from what is possible in the offspring that arises from their death. This is the same bittersweet feelings I have about the intimate changes I feel happening and am holding with our SoulFullHeart clients and in the global phoenix cycle that we are all connected to and impacted by that is playing out in the looming changes that are coming, whether we invite them into our lives or not.

Visit SoulFullHeart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart Healing Process.

Playing Pretend In The Shadow Of Our Truth

By Chris Tydeman

(Note: This was written by me through the heart of a young part of mine. He
is going through a difficult stage and he has become aware of the necessity of
having caring and truly compassionate (understanding) people in his life such as
Jillian, Wayne, and Katie of SoulFullHeart.)

Truth. It can be our worst enemy and our best friend all in the same
moment. We run from it fiercely, yet it is always by our side. We try to sever its
connection to us by any means possible, but it reminds us in a multitude of ways
that it is impossible to do so. Wherever you are, there it is.

In the course of my life, I have avoided even the softest of truths. I didn’t
want to seem ignorant. I didn’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. I didn’t want to
cause conflict. I have been the master of the “white” lie. Yet for each one told, it
was like the silk thread of a spider’s web. Eventually, you get stuck. Then comes
guilt, shame, or anger, either expressed or repressed.

These lies had a purpose for me. They gave me the cover of being
acceptable, maybe even wonderful. The rewards were greater that the risks, or
so I thought. I was given praise, admiration, and self-gratification. But never the
one thing I was truly looking for. Love.

I don’t mean the “love” we have all come to accept as love. That “love”
comes from doing the “right” things, making the “right” choices, or saying
the “right” words to make everyone feel better about themselves.

The Love I refer to is the one you get for being honest, for being real, and
for advocating for your well-being. That Love has only come in drips or crumbs.
So much so, that when it really does come, you are leery of it or even frightened
by it. It has been a stranger the minute we landed here.

This is the Love that is needed to face the hard truths. The ones buried
deep inside. The ones that we dare not speak of, for they cast a light on our darkest fears, our biggest despair. These truths are the ones that can bring us peace through hardship, awareness through humility, heaven through hell.

Unfortunately, we feel nailed down, caged in, and tied up by the very thing that
can set us free.

This cannot be done alone. We need friends in Heart and in Love to hear
us, hold us, and honor us through this most difficult act of bravery. When you get
down to it, we are all still young children playing pretend in the shadow of our
Truth.

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

What does your real power and bigness look like?

By Wayne Vriend

Have you ever felt that a smaller or lesser version of you is living your life? (By smaller or lesser, I don’t mean bad or wrong, but rather lacking in your power and bigness.)

Why can’t you find friends to whom you don’t feel so invisible around?

Why does your family culture seem so impenetrable to your changing values?

Why do you remain in relationships that you know have a high degree of toxicity?

Why have you been unable to find a more fulfilling way to earn money in the world?

If the above questions don’t feel like the ones you ask about your life, then you have either found and healed your way to a really rare healthy life configuration, or it’s a smaller version of you who is doing the assessing.

A smaller version of you, made up of specific parts of you, are what does life until a you arises to alleviate them of the strategized way of doing your life that they have learned to do, in your absence. Up till now.

This smaller version of you is looking for a good enough status quo kind of equilibrium with which to survive, and especially to avoid rejection and pain. This applies if you are outwardly struggling in life or considered successful and well adapted. This smaller version of you is very predisposed to only taking the safest of risks, which are hardly risks at all, and has become expert in living out of preapproved cultural norms. This you won’t allow you to show up in your real and vulnerable feelings for fear that if that you gets rejected, there is no stand in double to take it’s place. Even your expressions that you consider authentic and real are channelled through this managed bureaucracy of you to significantly tone down the risks, and to strategize the ‘realness.’

The smaller version of you is run by what we call the Prime Monarch part of you, (ultimately motivated by love, but compromised by life’s hardening experiences) and it is in charge of the parts of you who had to be suppressed inside of you for your intact functioning. The vulnerable and afraid you; the magical you; the you who still only knows how to truly play; all had to be suppressed as you grew ‘up.’

And given the territory; and given the lack of a present you who could relieve this smaller version of you; this you is to be honored and thanked. It found a way. It showed up.

The difficulty though is this new you arising with these deeper assessment questions that you maybe didn’t even notice on your radar much before are now growing in your awareness. This new you begins with emerging desire, honesty, needs, advocacy, dissatisfaction, and self love to become a presence in your ‘you’ stream.

What would your real power and bigness look like if it manifested in your life and relationships and decisions? You might be able to get whiffs of it, but you don’t really know, do you?

Of course you don’t. You haven’t lived your way there, which is the only way to ever arrive and keep arriving there. There is no one size fits all template of what bigness looks and feels like. There are some very refreshing common earmarks, but the way they show up and express in your life are as diverse as fingerprints and snowflakes.

So the real question then is something like this: ‘How could the life I’m living, the one I find myself in, actually lead me to more and more of my real self, instead of fortifying my false self?’

That question in itself is only one that an emerging real self could ask. The smaller version of you simply can’t entertain such a question. It can embrace self improvement, and fixing problems, but not the task of emotional authentication.

I feel the smaller part of myself right now, as I write this, wondering if it’s OK to be this big, to be this authoritative sounding, to say we have solutions, and also wondering where this will lead, away from my own current familiar. ‘Who’s going to look after me?’ he asks. The small part of ourselves is not bad, or a drag. They feel insecure because their needs and vulnerability is real, and they need a larger us, who is willing to feel them and respond, rather than suppress and power through.

Soulfullheart, as a process (not to be mistaken with a therapy), was created for people who are at this stage of awareness, and desire, and frustration – all necessary ingredients to making the choice to find and discover and heal your way to your real you. The SFH process derives its’ value from people like you who feel called to themselves to undertake it.

If this article resonates inside of you as speaking your truth, I promise you, that your real you is waiting and longing for you to take the next step into your bigness, and begin your Soulfullheart process.

Please contact me, Wayne or my wife Jillian for a free intro into where you could go from here.

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

Heart-To-Heart Knowing

By Katie Calder

I invite you to take a moment and think about this: when was the last time that you managed to sit across from someone and feel into knowing them, to know their heart and how it operates, maybe even how and why it resonates with yours?

We assume we know someone because we grew up with them in our family or they’ve been our friend for years…but how often have we said once emotions are heightened, “wow, I don’t actually know this person at all”. I offer from my own heart-centered feelings that we go through our lives only thinking that we know someone. If we lived in our hearts we would feel the need to feel their hearts on a deeper level that transcends simply knowing facts or stories about those in our lives.

The majority of my family only knows stories about me. The key word is “know”…not “feel”. I imagine that if they allowed themselves to “feel” stories about me instead they would receive a lot more information about who I am than they have up until now. I do not fault them for their error for I’ve done the same to them. There are a lot of wounds that I still feel within my relationship to them that keep parts of me from wanting to reach out and offer this new way of being together and getting to know each other all over again on a much deeper level. A part of me feels that she does want me to waste any energy on them, for they wouldn’t try to do the same for me. There is a lot of assumption that they won’t “get it” and unfortunately I do feel that she is right…at least for now.

When I lost my father in January of 2011, it sent a huge ripple through my family and therefore through my life. It was my first year living in Vancouver and I had to promptly return to Ontario for a couple of weeks to be with my family. Thinking back on it now, the best and worst moments I had, happened when I could sit and cry and curse as loudly as I wished to a loving cousin who seems to “get me” the most. Being allowed to be fully in an emotion, no matter what the cause is a huge gift and one that we do not offer each other often enough…and seldom ever outside of crisis situations like the loss of a friend or family member.  What I realize now that I have been on my own SFH journey, is that one of the greatest gifts we could ever give another human being is to sit and be with them in vulnerability and emotion, no matter how raw the experience. If only I had been doing this “parts” work by then, I would have taken the time to mourn with each of my realized parts and helped them through it while no one else in my family could. Perhaps I still need to do that. In fact, I feel I should. There are many unresolved and unhealed aspects of my relationship with my father and they all shake and quiver in response to that in their own way.

The truth is, not allowing each other to live heart-centred and feeling-based lives robs each of us of a huge gift – truth and authenticity. I feel it is virtually impossible to step into your best, fully-realized self unless your feelings are felt out by those who love you. How can one grow into the magnificent human being they are meant to become if they are constantly emotionally neglected? It is like ignoring a child for most of their child-years and expecting them to still grow into fully-functioning adults with no major social or self-esteem issues. We need to stop telling people who are “depressed” that they need to medicate in order to feel better. We need to stop telling people that reframing their thinking and becoming more “positive” is the answer. Positivity will come and depression will be relieved with love, care and empathy. Unfortunately it seems that in a society that doesn’t believe in processes and allowing things to take time in order to grow and change properly, we will always be looking for a the “quick fixes” like meds and turning your thoughts around, even at the protestation of your parts that need to be held and felt before they can feel better.

The idea of leading with vulnerability is a daunting one and I can tell you from personal experience that it is one of the most difficult things to do. I’m still getting the hang of it and it’s definitely not something we are meant to one day do perfectly, of course. Or could it be that this is one of those many instances where it’s appropriate to say that  doing it imperfectly in fact means that you are doing it perfectly after all? I like that idea.

In love, vulnerability and support for your own SFH journey,

~ Katie

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