Tag: Divine Connection

Feeling My Spirit/Matter Split (Part One): Life As An Initiate At SoulFullHeart Sanctuary Blog Series

Published on by Kasha RosaLeave a comment

This is the fourth entry in the Life As An Initiate At SoulFullHeart Sanctuary Blog Series. Go here to read the third one.

recovering faith

 

By Kathleen Calder

The old photographs in front of me in digital form are, for parts of me, evidence of an old life and an old me. An attachment to them lives on inside me though I have looked at them a thousand times, and I feel reactions rise up yet again to my body, my outbound energy, and my self-loathing (that may be too strong of a term to use, but at times it does feel I have harbored that strong of a feeling about myself inside parts of me). Photos of a “me” in university studying Theatre, of a “me” exploring freelance modeling and the sexual messiness that came with that at times, and ultimately a “me” that felt most times worthless, incapable and even, yes, “stupid”, “ugly”, “fat”, etc.

It feels tender to let these feelings rise up again and yet for another part of me it feels useless…why let part of me obsess over the past? What is this part looking for…more suffering? These are unanswered questions in the moment, yet there is something about what I was living through that I feel connects directly to my process today.

I remember well the thought pattern I fell into and couldn’t get out of, starting around age 12. Puberty had begun to set in and my body began to develop the shape that I now have. My social world was getting tougher with hormones arising along with an emerging desire to have a boyfriend, while watching other girls my age draw what seemed to part of me like “all of the attention.” Immediately another part came in with messages of needing to find ways to compete but also with messages of my “incompetence” to do so.

On the other hand, I also remember being a “good Catholic girl”. Part of me leaned into church and the feeling of being with “God”. I realize now that this was my first experience of something bigger than me holding me, even if I wasn’t sure how to picture it exactly. I feel with some tears in the moment that this is what held me more than I realized at the time and kept me going through these tough years where I had parts developing like crazy to cover over my porosity and sensitivity as much as possible, to make life feel doable and less insane-feeling. Yes, it was in a Catholic framework, but the Divine is still the Divine and I have had many lifetimes of leaning into an inexplicable energy that comforts, challenges, and ultimately helps me grow somehow.

To me this all demonstrates the beginnings of what would become my own “Spirit/Matter Split”, which is easily one of the greatest themes at work in my life and perhaps for all of us on a global scale. Only recently have I begun to feel how big of a deal it would be if the biggest thing I do in this life is learn to bridge Spirit and Matter instead of feeling them as separate entities. As I go on I will illuminate what I mean.

What I wrote in the beginning illustrates the deep self-punishment pattern parts of me were in. Aspects of this included an obsession about how I looked and what my body weight was. It also included adopting many different “medications” in an attempt to quell this voice inside me but also to lift me up from the heaviness of what most people call “real life”. I remember there being a dense dreariness in my field about how life was supposed to be and how it would inevitably turn out. At times I still have this and I am now working with it consciously in order to feel and heal the parts that still hold it as Truth. This is a piece of family and cultural legacy. No amount of positive affirmations or reframing of my thinking could penetrate this voice and heal these wounds long-term.

So far, I can feel that…

Matter is the density of the material world, both energetically and physically. It is the churning of machines in our industrial factories. It is the ground on which we walk, run, cycle or drive. It is our physical bodies that we tend to obsess over, hold contempt for, and blame for so much. It is “is-ness”.

Spirit is the abstract. It is our feelings and our intuitions, which both can come with such an intangibility that they either pass through us unnoticed or are deliberately ignored/buried. It is life force itself. It is often an experience and a flow that cannot be put into words, it just IS. In a way it is “is-ness” too, but more so in the sense that it is literally All That Is, all at once.

See? One I can talk about more directly, while one needs to be described poetically in order to do it justice in human/Matter terms. Matter is meant to be temporary, fleeting, in the moment, tangible and dense, while Spirit is meant to be ever-lasting, enduring, unbreakable…and though it is mostly energy, it is what we can count on to always be there and it is what our hearts and souls long for more of, consciously or unconsciously.

There is no good vs. evil here. There is not even a real comparison between the two concepts. They are ultimately One; we have just created a duality perhaps to make parts of us feel better. There is a definite, bittersweet pain that comes with feeling Divine connection while there is still so much life to live, especially during this phase of life on this planet. But what could/would it mean if we integrated our daily life experience and our spiritual experiences and indeed didn’t have to define or compartmentalize either one from the other? What if the whole idea behind Matter is that it is a conduit and holding space for Spirit to play in? And what if we are the ones meant to link the two?

What if I am one of the ones called to be a bridge and lead others in this during my lifetime?

What if you are meant to come with me?

I’m realizing now how little experience I have had with nonduality in this life. I am looking forward to being able to let in some tastes of it as this dualistic experience of life continues to heal inside me. For parts of me, being able to be in a strictly human life with abandon has been comforting for short phases, though it has never really brought me satisfaction or deep joy. Perhaps as my parts begin to realize that they finally will get their deepest needs met while leaning into Spirit and taking practical life steps at the same time, I will become more ready to let the Nondual in and therefore let in my essential essence and more tones of my soul and of the Divine than I have ever let in yet.

Well, if life’s Matter is the playground I’m beginning to feel it is, then what have I got to lose in exploring this theme of bridging Spirit with it, except old patterns of being in life that my parts and I are tired of anyways? What could/would shift in my life if I can integrate the two?

I suspect that I, and my life, will change in more ways than I count.

Sounds pretty good to me!

 

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

The Magic Of Your Power Combined With Your Vulnerability: Golden Earth Tales

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

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

By Raphael Awen

Life is about growth and change. Not even death affords an escape from this reality; for death is not a cessation of being, but only more change.

Our journey into and through a physical life is a great metaphor and reflects this reality. Our soul being accepts the journey of taking on human flesh. This journey into human flesh begins as the microscopic combination of sperm and egg, which gives way to a time of exponential growth and change, becoming comfortable and familiar with a home environment, only to be burped out into a brand new world, and then another. Infancy gives way to toddlerhood, which gives way to childhood, then adolescence, teen years, adulthood, mid-life, and into our fullness of life, and completion of a life.

Our soul chose the change of taking on human flesh, human emotion, human gender, and human experience.

You chose to incarnate.

You chose to change.

You chose to surrender to having needs and desires.

Most of us forget this for much of our lives or even for many entire lifetimes. Most of us become attached to belief systems and ways of life that enable us to maintain this forgetfulness of the power and presence of our choice. We do this at almost any cost.

This is not without good reason. In our power, we chose human life; we chose vulnerability. We are unable to escape human vulnerability with any obtainable thing or relationship. In fact, every desirable thing you obtain only heightens the fear of losing that good thing. Even life itself, we fear losing. Most of us can barely stand to feel the utter susceptibility we find ourselves in. We’d rather effort a myriad of feelings and distractions to not have to feel this vulnerability.

Strangely, we put our power in service of denying our vulnerability. In so doing, we miss out on the magic of both.

You have most likely structured your relationship with life to provide you with a sense that life is happening to you. Like a monk who has chosen life in a monastery, you surrender to an arrangement of what you can expect in return for what you are expected to give. Life is fearfully bigger than you. You make a deal for some predictability, some security, and accept the monotony that comes with that. All of this as an exchange to maintain the sense that life is safely bigger than you.

Now, you get to feel like you are riding the waves of life as best you can with the choices you have. You have outsmarted life. You have surrendered to it. You have made yourself smaller than life. You let life circumstance direct and lead you. Aren’t you spiritual? Aren’t you surrendered? You have given yourself to God (in some form) and God will take care of you.

What if this is only a set up perception of life from this part of you that hasn’t reconciled itself to the vulnerability you find yourself in?

What if life isn’t actually happening to you, but instead, you are happening to life?

You are not the victim of another person, or an illness, God or any devil, a slowing economy, aging or any other of the multitude of things that are felt to occur to us.

What if life is only and ever reflecting back to you the power of your choice?

What if life is in such deep and reverent gratitude to you for the gift of your power filled surrender to human vulnerability that life only wants to reflect back to you your power and greatness?

Victor Frankl, author of Man’s Search For Meaning, shares his experience in the hell hole of a nazi concentration camp where he came to the deep and profound realization that it was he and only he that could interpret and apply meaning to his experience. His captors, he came to realize, had not even the slightest ability to take that power from him unless he gave it to them.

What meanings are you applying to the circumstances you find yourself in? Are the circumstances happening to you or are you responsible for creating and drawing these circumstances to yourself? What is life and its never ending change wanting to awaken you to?

What courageous step is life asking you to take now in this never ending discovery of who and what you are?

What are you done with that’s time to let go of? A relationship? An identity? A habit pattern? A way of life?

What are you ready to embrace and allow entrance into your life?

What courage are you in possession of that can fuel your next step?

Life only and ever wants to take you into more of you. Life understands your fear, for it has felt its own fear of the life that it finds itself in. Life invites you out to play, to discover, to be curious of who and what you will become around the corner of your next choice.

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

Realizing Reality Together: Golden Earth Tales

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

infinitelovegates

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

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

By Raphael Awen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I love this madness!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

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

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

By Raphael Awen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our Essence As Infinite Love: Golden Earth Tales

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

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(This is Part 3 of the ongoing blog series: Golden Earth Tales. To begin at part 1, go here)

By Raphael Awen

We left off in the previous blog in this series with an introductory feeling tone of being infinite love. We felt into how who and what we see ourselves as needs a deep and overwhelming expansion of consciousness to let in the higher reality of infinite love. We need to add in here that this reality of infinite love includes the other infinities of infinite possibility, infinite stillness, infinite potential, and infinite power. There’s more you can add in. After all, it’s only words and language we’re using to attempt to access a feeling tone of your essence.

There is nothing more powerful than a feeling tone that moves through your being and colors your self-perception. When you’re depressed, we could say that you are depression. While not a true statement of your essence, you have for many intents and purposes, become depression in this dimension. Your self-perception, already shrunken to the five-sense earth dimension, now shrunken further into a narrower still bandwidth of perception has become flooded with a powerful feeling tone.

Let’s for comparison sake say that the opposite of the word ‘depressed’ is ‘expressed,’ (because we can invent our own lexicon anytime we want, after all, we are infinite possibility!) I’d certainly rather be in a state of expression than depression, and wouldn’t we all? Well, the truth of that question is actually, no, most of us only think we would rather be in a state of expression over depression. Depression is a shut down and safe place that we subconsciously and understandably choose as a soul, out of wounded emotional patterns. Then parts of us buy into the pathetic current biological and medical paradigm and get to play victim and draw some sympathy. What’s crazier still though is that the depressed person actually not only plays victim with their depression, they also use it to avoid the depression.

Depression is actually one of the soul’s beautiful doorways leading into healthy and alive expression and unless you are willing to honor your depression, you won’t find this doorway. This is the pattern of choice for most, because leaving depression and entering expression of essence (very different from happiness which is more of a medication) is a deeply fearful thing (as well as very understandable). We’ll get into soul-fear dynamics and how they conflict with our innate desire to grow a couple blogs from now, but my point here is that getting into your essence is getting into a feeling tone that floods your being, that colors it, that irreversibly changes everything about you, never to return again to life as you knew it. Thank god it’s a progressive thing that digests and unfolds in your life, or we’d all pop circuits and become true loonies if it were not so, but it is without a doubt, personal transmutation, at a pace you can bear. You become different at the core of your being.

If you’re not up for the world of feeling, or have some story that feelings aren’t real, save yourself a whole lot of frustration and leave off this path now of seeking to experience essence. Many spiritualities, especially the ones that teach about ‘the nondual essence of all being’ (which is what we are getting into in this series) are just this kind of suffering loop that pound their pulpit declaring that your feelings can and must be ignored, turfed or transcended in some form to allow you access into your essence. They go on further to say that this is the core of your suffering: that you want. It’s your needs and desires that are at the root of all your suffering.

Simply follow their method and picture of reality to kill your wanter, or ignore it sufficiently, and you pop into another magical dimension. ‘Does this actually work?’ you say. Well of course it ‘works,’ or there wouldn’t be myriads of souls embracing this approach. But what ‘works’ is that only a part of you got into the door of some aspect of your essence, while entire swaths of your being got paved over. Here you find the common denominator of Christianity and the New Age Movement. Who’d have imagined these strangest of bedfellows coming to the same demise? We are so nearing the end of these partial solutions and it’s evident that many of us are rattling our cages in hunger for and even demand for more. I support that rattle.

I almost feel to apologize for the rant energy flowing through me right now. But I have no apology. You can find teaching galore on essence, but what you won’t find much of is any personal transparency, real transparency on how that’s working or not working for the person teaching it. Sorry, but I have no interest in that teaching or teacher. ‘Get real or go home’ a part of me so wants to say to both spiritual teachers and spiritual seekers. I, in contrast to this part of me, can more tenderly admit the personal hurt and pain of lost relationship, underlying this anger. One way or another, the universe will learn what it seeks to learn. It’s our choice what role we play in that.

Thank you for feeling this. I hope I’m making you mad or glad. We need to get into the feeling domain big time if we hope to access true and lasting connection to our essence.

So then, now that we hopefully made some sacred space to feel into essence, what can we say about it? It has been called the ‘nondual’ for lack of a better term. What is meant by this is that the realm of true essence is non dualistic. It is not the world of dualism; that is comparative difference.

A little boy recognizes an airplane in the sky and says, ‘Look, airplane.’ He’s already lost a good amount of his wonder at the sight, compared to the first time he saw one, now that he has the label for it. The label is already taking over the awe of the actual thing. Not much later, it no longer even raises his eyebrow. This is a picture of how the dualistic mind labels and enters the world of ‘this, not that’ and so deadens experience by categorizing and labeling. Wonder is reduced to a computer like filing system.

So, if the ‘nondual’ is not all this, then what is it? It is the world where ‘twoness’ doesn’t exist. There is no other to compare or ‘dualize’ with. All is arising wonder. Many say that this state is not a state, for to call it that, you would be in effect defining it, and it cannot be defined or compared. It just is. It is the upstream reality and source of all matter, life and consciousness. Experientially, people who claim this awakening to the nondual claim to be free of this ‘deadening to wonder’ overlay that all of had to take on in becoming human.

It’s sort of like the proverbial ability to ‘stop and smell the roses,’ but from an altered state of mind, or better said, from a mind broken of its need to dominate the essence of a thing. It’s kind of funny, because here we are pretzeling our minds trying to define and understand the nondual which is said to be indefinable and unknowable. I like to offer that the nondual is a return to a magical state of wonder, coming more and more free of the mind’s deadening effect, and more essentially, that this state of being is actually your home frequency of being.

Now, for instance, if you need to arrive somewhere on time, you’re still going to need your dualistic mind. 8 o’clock comes an hour earlier than 9 o’clock. Time is one of the biggest illusions of all. We simply made it up with our minds’ ability to dualize and then all synchronized our watches. Voila, see you at 8! Time isn’t real. Money is another one. So is language. These are all things we made up for our own purposes. Totally cool shit to say the least. All of the mind’s abilities in these ways are not to be downplayed. They do a ton for us, but they also seriously limit our hunger to experience essence.

What we wrestle with so strongly in our search to return to essence and its awakening is actually an awakening in itself that came before. It is your awakening into duality from nonduality that your mind is still mostly not done with yet. You were born out of the nondual (mind you, you weren’t a ‘you’ in the state of oneness) into duality, you were sourced out of it. You are ‘dual awakened,’ we could say. Hence like the little boy, you live in a world of comparative difference. It’s a powerful thing in and of itself, but with the obvious downside of becoming so identified with duality that almost all connection to our essence is lost. Bad news indeed! ‘No me gusta’ we’d say here in our emerging Espanol – ‘I don’t like.’

What helped me recently is feeling into my essence as infinite love. I again say feeling, because the mind can’t grok the word ‘infinite,’ being finite as it is. I feel energy coming from my original source nature assisting me in letting this in. Jelayan recently wrote beautifully about letting in the ‘drip-line of my nondual nature.’ It sends a wave of awareness over my being that I can feel wants to flow more and more.

In the next blog in this series, I will get into side-by-side comparison of our essence (nondual) and our expression (dual). Admittedly, that’s a very dualistic thing in further attempt to ‘explain’ the nondual. Maybe, we will all reach the edge of our minds tolerance for such insanities and pop over into the nondual, or at least into a big soaker hose like Jelelle’s article offered.

Raphael Awen is a co-creator and a facilitator at SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Follow him on twitter @raphaelawen for blog updates and more or subscribe to this blog (if you haven’t already) to receive each new posting from Soulfullheart Sanctuary in your email.

Awakening Is Like A Flower Bud Unfolding

Published on by Jelelle AwenLeave a comment

heartflower

Awakening is less like a lightning bolt coming from the sky as it is like a flower bud slowly unfolding its petals in response to the warmth of the sun.

Feelings of warmth, comfort, and joy course through me; these are the feelings of the energy that move in response to my beloved mate Raphael. The feelings are familiar but the intensity of soul frequency is new. Our relationship is eight years old and brand new, both. The marriage between Jillian and Wayne (our previous names) is complete and a new union is arising between Jelelle and Raphael. This is not just semantics, changing these names, but a symbolic decision to represent the stunningly new sense that we both feel about ourselves. We also retired the inherited family name of Vriend and have chosen the last name of Awen, which means Divine Inspiration and is also the fifth element.

Who are Jelelle and Raphael Awen? It is unknown and familiar; it is us in our best moments and us in our letting go of the past definitions. It is the result of years of process work, devotional connection to the Divine, and, recently, meditative astral journeying to our true soul home called Golden Earth and the parallel dimension of Avalon. In one way changing a name is easy; it is getting to the place of genuinely wanting to inhabit something new that is challenging.

This is the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. It is about change and transformation, life arising anew at every sunrise and sunset, we get to arise anew along with it, even changing our names if we are called to. It is about nature’s beauty matching and holding space for our own inner beauty to respond and bloom.

We’ve rejected feeling that earning money should be the goal of life and embraced that money represents love and can come in many forms (including gift exchange) and shouldn’t be the meaning of life. We’ve rejected pressure to conform to the rationalist, five sense picture of reality and embraced that our reality is much more vast, mysterious, and multidimensional than we can even imagine.

We feel that you have to say ‘no’, to push back on what you’ve been conditioned and programmed to believe about life, in order to experience what your meant to experience: yourself as an expression of Infinite Love. The SoulFullHeart Way Of Life operates from this foundation of Infinite Love, it overflows from this well spring, and it gushes from this pulsing vein. Any other source is an illusion created by the false self. Saying ‘no’ is only for a phase of time until you are made bare and new with only ‘yes’ as your necessary response to what you are offered. Yes to desire, yes to learning, yes to connection, yes to love. You become a student and teacher of Yes.

This came to me this morning as one way to describe the process of awakening that participation in the SoulFullHeart calls us to inhabit: Awakening is less like a lightning bolt coming from the sky as it is like a flower bud slowly unfolding its petals in response to the warmth of the sun. We provide the warmth of the sun in the form of love, support, guidance, and a setting in which you can truly focus on your process. You are the flower, each unfolding petal revealing the essence of your heart and soul expression. And the Divine smiles on it all, caught up in the goodness of our efforts and desire.

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

Digesting Christianity’s Surprise Demise: Divine Father Dialogues Day 28

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

 

Wayne's Mandala

W:  Hello, Divine Father.

DF:  Hello, Wayne.

W:  How are you digesting our last talk, or should I say ‘my last talk?’ I was a bit long winded wasn’t I?

DF:  Not long enough as far as I’m concerned, Wayne. I could listen to you tell this story over and over. When you consider how many times, and how far and wide the Christian gospel has been preached, what now cannot be called anything more than a really cheap lie, born of a really slimy intent, and how it’s been crammed down the throats of the gullible, it’s going to take some long windedness and repetition to undo.

W:  Thank you, Divine Father.  I feel some foreboding to be this outed around all this. These are fighting words for so many.

DF:  My sense is that your words will only come into the awareness of people whose hearts and souls are ready to take them in.  There’s no need for a holy war around any of this.  The fate of Christianity and Paulianity is sealed and it is in collapse now, all on it’s own accord.

W:  Yeah, and I get that’s important for someone who has been deep into Christianity, for him or her to not feel totally invaded, and left unsupported by having his or her faith shown to be a complete farce if it wasn’t something their soul was ready to see.

DF:  While that’s true, we are also fast approaching the time where Christianity itself is about to implode in on itself, of it’s own volition, as well as on account of the focused and collective energies of the human race simply wanting to learn and know and grow. When more of this collapse of Christianity happens, there will be many people simply coming unhinged in despair, anger, and chaos. It would be so much better if they were ready, but many simply won’t be.

W:  I’m curious for your digestions about what I shared yesterday.

DF:  A big dawning awareness for me, Wayne, is the realization that at the time the lie of Christianity was concocted, it was in a palpable climate of fear for one’s eternal destiny. Judaism had come to be about gaining heaven, but the price for entry for the non-Jew, as you talked about was pretty unreal. Paul’s message of ‘all you need to do is believe’ addressed this leading fear of gaining heaven and avoiding hell.

W:  And it seems that in our times, this leading fear has largely subsided for most people, even Christians.  The message of ‘turn or burn’ has lost its’ appeal in the church world, even though that message completely lines up with the tenets of the faith. It just isn’t that effective in filling pews or collection plates like it used to, so leaders necessarily play it down.

DF:  When we look at what is filling the pews today, it really is evidence of a movement in steep decline. Big box religion in it’s many varieties is becoming more and more bizarre in it’s attempts to stay afloat, and this awareness is going mainstream.

W:  What I’m curious about and wanted to discuss with you, Father, is the question of how this ploy of Paul’s became the embryo of what Western Civilization was founded upon.  Some of the things that I can see a huge resemblance in are money, business, capitalism, patriarchy, education, family, patriotism, to name just a few.  There’s a common denominator of being obedient to some form of ‘the almighty’, along with the idea that ‘non-compliance’ will surely be punished.  It seems those thematics and reality picture came from Christianity.  Other influences certainly influenced Christianity’s formation that preceded it, but Christianity it seems encapsulated and launched some really big things.

DF:  Things like duty, obligation, penalty…

W:  …and the idea that came with that is when all of these are satisfied, you’ll be allowed a measured dessert of happiness.

DF:  Do you really feel, Wayne, that Paul’s worldview, or the Paulianity he created from his worldview, became the foundation of Western Civilization?

W:  I don’t know. I thought you’d know.

DF:  You sounded like you knew a moment ago.

W:  That was just a part of me trying to sound academic. Truth is, I don’t know, and I’m certainly not an Academic, but, I do suspect it may be way more true than any of us have realized up till now. More than suspect it, I feel it to be true.

DF:  Well, I’m with you on the not knowing, as well as the feeling.  Let’s see what we can sort through of it.

W:  I figured you’d be up for it.

DF:  This one is way too important to pass up.

W:  Especially when we consider that western civilization is so evidently near the end of whatever it is and that something new is in the making.

DF:  Where do we start, Wayne?

W:  Well, for me, what comes is the question about why did I have such a deep implant for most of my adult life that said ‘When I get ahead, then I will obtain the life I really want, then I will explore my creativity and gifts.’

DF:  Let’s try and feel that together on its’ most fundamental level. ‘Ahead’ feels like a form of obtaining heaven, wouldn’t you say? Or is that too simplistic?

W:  That rings true for me, Father. Paulianity was all about addressing something missing or lacking. Wow.

DF:  Which raises the question if there really was anything lacking.

W:  That one is really so big, Father, when I feel it. That energy permeated my entrance into Christianity and my focus inside of it. It also really speaks to how I entered my first marriage and raising 2 daughters, with a big ideal of being a good father. It certainly speaks to the focused and intense input of energy into learning and growing the painting business for me.

DF:  So, Wayne, What do you now feel is the underneath that energy of getting ahead?

W:  It goes so much deeper than mere thinking I need to get ahead, but to a much more primal feeling of wanting to feel something about myself that I couldn’t access or experience, way down in the basement of my being. It was a feeling that I was somehow on the wrong side of all that is good and alive and meaningful, and I needed to find my way there, somehow, some way, to something utopian.

DF:  Sounds like that favored verse in Romans; ‘All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but the gift of God is life eternal.’ A hundred and ten percent Paulianity again to the rescue, wouldn’t you say?

W:  Totally. Another Wow. The very idea of being separate from all that is good…, Can we really credit Paul with that much influence?

DF:  These deep feelings were a deep part of humanity’s search long before Paul, but no one coalesced them into such a potent force with as far reaching effects is my truth. The first and most successful corporation isn’t McDonalds or Apple, it’s none other than the Roman Catholic Church.  Roman Catholicism asserts that the apostle Peter was it’s first Pope, but only as a way to hide the fact that it was Paul’s ruthless life’s work that seeded it’s reality into being, and in turn seeded all of Christianity that flowed from its’ Roman beginnings to this very day.

W:  …and in turn, seeded a pervasive way of life into my being, 2 millenniums later.

DF:  Wayne, this is really important to feel and to take stock of, and to own. That who you are, and how you feel about life on so many levels, was passed on to you through the DNA of a culture, which originated in a feeling state, in this case the feeling state was and is separation from divinity. This formed the reality in which you swam, but left you without a conscious relationship with the water. You became the reality of the cultural conditioning that was handed down to you on so many levels, and in so many ways, until you began to consciously feel your way through that conditioning.

W:  The beginning of a great awakening…

DF:  The beginning of great awakening, yes, and one that really never ends.  The human race needed to come to know itself and fulfill itself in all of it’s potential.  The only way to this was by collective journey and discovery, and it seems really evident to me, that that journey had to begin with an externalized god. Paul was only championing a new and better way to gain access to and favor with this separate out-there God.  Deep in collective consciousness was a felt sense of separation, so deep that it is still felt today.  Paul’s ploy, born out of his own felt sense of wanting to bridge his own feelings of separation, in his case through power and dominance in the name of god, could only find traction because of where humanity was at collectively.

W:  So then Paul isn’t to blame quite like the way I want to give him a really swift kick in the ass?

DF:  You’d have to kick yourself along with all of humanity in the ass if you needed to carry out a punishment.

W:  That would be a lot of ass kicking.

DF:  The paradox here though is that even looking for whom to blame, and the need to blame and punish comes from this felt state of separation.

W:  Like how?

DF:  Separation presumes a gulf between humanity and divinity. In that presumption is of course a guilty party, and of course, this ‘God’ is designated to be perfect in the infinite sense, so that leaves humanity culpable.  Oh, and don’t forget, it was here that nature was blamed and made bad and dirty, along with humanity. It was human nature that was said to be fallen. From there it seeks to offer a bridge, which is its’ good news amidst all the bad news.

W:  Good news amidst the bad news, that’s the ploy of all of slimy salesmanship today.

DF:  And from start to finish, all of this is conceived and has its’ reality only as long as the story of separation holds dominion.

W:  So then what’s the reality of the matter if it isn’t separation?

DF:  The new story is that humanity was never separate from divinity, and never separate from nature, and nature was never fallen.  It was just the power of the old story that was endorsed in the collective that gave it a deep and pervasive felt reality.

W:  It’s like, Father, that, we are not so much in relationship as we are relationship itself.

DF:  Try and wrap your mind around that one, huh?

W:  I know I just said it, but I can’t quite really imagine what it means.

DF:  Humanity was and is inseparably a part of, not apart from. Being in relationship requires 2 or more in separation is how I’d say it. Being relationship itself presumes oneness.

W:  I like that, somehow, what looks a lot like 2 or more has in fact become one.

DF:  This is the dawning awareness of Jesus actual words ‘as you do to others, so you do unto yourself,’ rather than the moral prescription version of those words that made it into the bible of ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ One presumes a separate self, and projects obligation and duty and the other version presumes oneness and love.

W:  That’s totally cool.

DF:  Like majorly cool.

W:  So then, me wanting to fix blame on Paul is evidence that Paulianity is still alive and well in me, though I left Paulianity 10 years ago now, and as fast as I could, I might add.

DF:  True, but these are the cultural realities that pervade the entire culture, the things you live and breathe in every day that are invisible. You may have personally moved a long way from this consciousness, but while humanity is still largely beholden to the culture of separation, you cannot be totally free of it. If you could, that would mean separation is real.

W:  So how and when do we move on from this yawning trap of separation then? Do we all have to wait for everyone to get it?

DF:  The truth is that you already are moving from the grip of separation.  If you are feeling it personally, that means humanity is feeling it. The soul of humanity agreed to enter the dark night of the soul of separation so as to complete it and graduate from it, into what comes after it.

W:  Which is?

DF:  Which is an entire world made knew, by a new story, it’s inhabitants and participants living from oneness, one with self; one with divinity; one with each other; one with all of nature. Change the story, and you change everything.

W:  So it’s like we need a new Paul to come along to seed and birth this new story then?

DF:  Actually, this story could never be born into consciousness by one hero savior figure.  It’s being born by many hero’s, changing many worlds and many cultures.

W:  Sort of sounds like a Messianic deliverance?

DF:  Except, this Messiah has already come. It just is.  People just living their way more and more into this consciousness, as their every day reality is what is ushering in this sea change of reality, a whole mass of Messiahs if you will.

W:  With a current world population of seven plus billion, that’s a whole lot of souls. That should make for a pretty good show.

DF:  Best to show up early and get a good seat, I’d say.

W:  But its’ also, Father, a great death of the old way in which many souls will perish in the chaos of all this collapse.

DF:  Souls cannot perish, Wayne. Lives can be lost, and that is tragic, on the human level. But a soul doesn’t feel it that way. A soul doesn’t consider it a great loss to live a life with a tragic human end. For a soul, this can be a great turning in what they chose to come here to learn and feel. Many souls asleep to what is befalling the world is actually necessary for it to manifest.

W:  Necessary? Ouch!

DF:  I know that sounds harsh to your Pauline ears, as if God had decided that it should be that way. No, nature decided it that way. Nature doesn’t mind evolving. Nature doesn’t mind trial and error, and instead sees it all as simply learning.

W:  Wow, I must have a part of me still pretty into some Pauline conditioning as you call it, because I’m not all the way on board with that.

DF:  It’s not that nature is sadist. The inherent value isn’t in the suffering; it’s in the learning in the midst of suffering. And all of the learning is about returning to essence.

W:  That I’m more on board with.

DF:  Good.

W:  Do you think we just sorted out a bunch of the world’s problems?

DF:  A pretty good chunk I’d say.

W:  No wonder I’m tired, that was a lot.

DF:  Well, go rest then, so we can do this again.  We may not be done.

W:  Will do. Thank you, Father.

DF:  Thank you! That was awesome.

Wayne Vriend is a co-founder of Soulfullheart Community, healer and author of 90 Days With Yeshua. Visit soulfullheart.com for more information.

 

Christianity’s Surprise Demise: Divine Father Dialogues Day 27

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

 

Wayne's Mandala

W:  Good Morning, Divine Father.

DF:  Hey, Good Morning, Wayne.

W:  I have a plan where I’d like to go with you today…

DF:  And where’s that?

W:  I’ve been digesting a book I’ve been re-reading called The Event That Created Christianity by Eric Zuesse, and it’s been calling to me again. I want to ask you to hear me out on this story.

DF:  Sounds good, Wayne, tell me about it.

W: Here comes a bunch of content if you’re up for it?

DF:  For sure, I’m up for it.

W:  Okay, here goes…So in Paul’s letter to his converts in Galatia, the very earliest of New Testament writings, though still some 20 years after Jesus’ death, Paul is forced to deal with an arising issue that’s going to blow the lid off of his life’s work unless he can wrangle it under some kind of control. Paul has been an influential and rising leader over the past 14 years in the sect of Judaism that Jesus started. The movement is now under James leadership, that’s Jesus’ brother whom he appointed just before Jesus was put to death by the Roman authorities for sedition against Rome.  Paul, however, has been off to one side of this movement considerably, as he has been introducing gentiles (as in non-jews) into the sect, successfully so, and herein is the mounting problem, which I’ll get to in a moment.  Paul; though a contemporary of Jesus admittedly has never met the man; who also has proudly had little to do with Jesus’ disciples. Paul, though he is credited for authoring over two thirds of the New Testament, strangely never referenced a single teaching or life experience of the earthly Jesus. Here in the letter to the Galatians, some 17 years into his work with the Jesus sect, for the first time, Paul claims to not only have met Jesus’ ghost in a physical resurrected apparition, but to have been certified by him in this apparition to be god’s anointed messenger. Paul now comes on with monstrous claims saying that the god of Judaism had changed his mind on everything he had previously sworn off on that he would never change his mind on. In other words, God is now completely pulling the pin on Judaism.  Problem is Paul had sold these converts on Judaism, and he has to master mind his choice of words and timing so as to keep a hugely hidden agenda adequately hidden. Paul is as hokey as this god he claims to have met. Problem is, hokey or not, Paul has been successfully attracting these non Jewish converts probably by the thousands, to this Jesus sect for some time selling them on something very different than what he is debuting now. Nobody has ever called themselves ‘Christian’ in any way shape or form, including Paul, and certainly not Jesus. Worshipping a Christ, as far as a follower of Judaism is concerned, is as false as any of the other forbidden pagan religions of the day. Judaism is the deal here, and if Judaism is anything, it’s one unitary God, no Son, and certainly no ghost, holy or otherwise.

Paul, is for the very first time rolling out something of epic proportions, again admittedly, to save his own ass, speaking of stuff that is unequivocally anathema to everything Jesus and his specific Judaistic sect of followers held dear, not to mention all the rest of Judaism, and not to mention all of what Paul himself had previously taught. He’s betting the farm though that his converts won’t see through it.

Paul, tells his converts that though he had been up until some 17 years prior obsessed with persecuting this Jewish movement with a murderous zeal. Then through his claimed conversion experience, on the road to Damascus to carry out his persecutions, god knocked him off his horse and called him to take his message to the world. The god he claimed to have had this completely unheard of encounter with (except maybe for Moses and the Burning Bush) rewards him somehow with a special revelation and calling.

DF:  Only the true god would do such a thing, right? Confounding human wisdom and all of that.

W:  Totally. Now, Paul’s been running this convert circus for non-jews into this Jesus sect for the last 14 years while hiding from his converts how very much off to the side, and completely out of collaboration with what Jesus’ disciples have been doing and teaching that Paul’s work actually is.  Pardon me, Father, if I’m repeating myself a bit here.

DF:  No problem, I’m tracking. I get you have to get this out.

W:  Thank you, Father, yes, I so do. Back to my story.

So now, the growing problem behind the scenes with this rapidly growing group of converts is a deal breaker, and the issue strangely, to our ears at least, has to do with the cock. These converts are not circumcised. They are not like the Jewish babies who were circumcised on the eighth day, according to the command of god in Judaism. If there is one defining issue of a follower of Judaism, laid out in Genesis chapter 17, verse 14, as a completely non-negotiable, forever and unchanging deal, it’s circumcision. James and his group finally comes full out and says ‘it’s circumcision or the door.’ Snip, snip, snip. Circumnavigate the penis with a scissors of all things! Maybe, we can thank Paul for trying to put the brakes on that one, but really, he could have cared less if it was about amputating the penis. In fact, he explicitly said that he wished castration upon the circumcision group who were opposing him. This opposing group however is none other than Jesus’ brother and closest disciples; James, Peter and John. For me personally, Father, it wasn’t until the eve of my journey in Christianity that I could see that what was plain as day in this text, that Paul was in conflict with the very leaders that Jesus left in his place.  I, like Christians everywhere, simply could not see such a travesty, for to see it, would erode everything Paul and his later followers set out to establish.  These ‘Judaizers,’ as he calls them were not some oppositional group that challenged him, but in fact the very ones who had earlier authorized him to take the message of Jesus outside of the Jewish population to what they call, the gentiles.  Paul is finally making his complete break with the movement Jesus begun to begin a brand new religion.

Paul was a con artist like no other. His hoax has endured for 2000 years, and even came to form the basis for the entire western civilization even deeply affecting the way of life for all westerners, not only Christians.

DF:  My god, Wayne. I don’t know what to say…. and of course, the women didn’t count for much….

W: Nope, no penis, no say. If only the women had a role in this, this pissing match parade about who’s included and who’s not wouldn’t have dominated our culture for all these years. Neither Judaism, nor Christianity would ever have came into existence had it not been for this battle of gender dominance. I guess it’s what we needed as a species on some level, to learn our way into something new.

DF:  Please go on…

W:  So now, the men in Paul’s thriving group are in no mind to sign up for circumcision, like Jesus’ true followers are finally asserting they must do, after some waffling on the matter. These men prefer instead to keep their cocks intact, thank you very much. Back in the first century, there isn’t any antibiotics, no antiseptics and no anesthetics. Just surviving such an operation and avoiding the risk of infection and death was a very tall order, and of course, one wrong slip of the knife on a writhing, screaming unsedated patient, and he’s now castrated.  The offer for an eternal heaven, for this temporal pain, had no takers, and Paul didn’t need to take a survey to know that. He had sold them on a much cheaper heaven without the price and seal of circumcision. Paul has his boatload of uncircumcised converts; wealthy; Roman; embracing what’s left of Jesus’ brand of Judaism; and he doesn’t intend to lose them.  But James has called it. It’s circumcision or expulsion.

DF:  Trim the cock or cut the flock…

W:  Totally. Paul had been betting that James was going to go with the flow as he had for some time, but obviously working his plan ‘b’ in case he didn’t. Paul had hoped that his continuing flow of shekels to the much poorer Jesus followers in Jerusalem would be enough to keep James quiet on the circumcision issue. It was all good until it wasn’t.  Now Paul’s cock was in compliance being born a Jew, no problem there, but his followers were not, and Paul’s life’s work would be in his own ambitious words ‘to have run in vain.’  This group that has been converted to what they’ve been led to believe is the Jesus sect of Judaism are now, surprisingly forced to choose between James, the sect’s overall leader, or Paul, their leader and teacher. Paul goes nuclear and claims that James, whom Jesus appointed leader before his death is in fact God’s enemy, along with the apostles who actually lived with and knew Jesus, because they are opposing what he openly calls his gospel. He in fact boasts, that he never knew the earthly Jesus ‘according to the flesh’ as the apostles prior to him did, but he knows the risen Christ ‘according to the spirit,’ and how that supersedes the ‘earthly apostles’ by nothing less than the decree of God. Holeee Moses, Wouldn’t you say?

DF:  “What is a preacher to do?”

W:  Hahaha, nice touch on the Indian accent, Father.  Paul decides to pull the God-told-me card in a way that’s really never been matched before or since. He makes the first ever claim to this group of people, that god’s son’s ghost appeared to him and called him to lead a new religion; that the apostles who met Jesus don’t count and circumcision is no longer the deal and the ones’ who are calling for it are in fact god’s enemies, and even the enemies of all men no less. Paul straps a rocket onto the ass of whatever exists at that time in the way of anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism in one fell swoop, and puts the Jewish heaven on sale for a bargain like no other. Only faith in a resurrected-after-death Christ is now the only requirement, which he calls ‘the true circumcision of the heart.’

DF:  You can just feel the men relaxing about now.

W:  I get to keep my beloved cock intact. Wow, I mean, maybe a toe or a finger, but who came up with the cock trimming idea and built a religion around it, I can’t for the life of me figure out.

DF:  That was that Heavenly Father dude man. He’s like the ultimate gang leader really, way beyond tattoo’s and piercings. It’s drop the drawers and prove it, or it’s get out the knife. I am God and there is NONE like me. He knew no one else had the balls to match those entry requirements but surely knew that sooner or later, someone would come along and try to reduce them…?

W:  Like a Paul, the very archetype of a con artist, who just so happened, by a very unique and well documented chain of events, in the Christian Bible no less, to need to save his swollen ass at any expense.

DF:  Sounds a bit like the Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Baker and Jerry Falwell debacle back in the eighties…

W:  You tracked that one huh?

DF:  Wouldn’t have missed it for anything, Wayne.

W:  Not that unusual at all really, just another coup d’etat in religion land really, other than the penis trimming. Any church split that we see today is pretty much the same thing. Paul is just a slimy salesman like no other and possibly never been matched in his ruthlessness to save his self image and power. His original draw to ‘The Almighty’ reflects NOT his devotion to God, but rather his lifelong and unrelenting worship of power.

DF:  You say this isn’t that unusual… but it’s majorly interesting I’d say…

W:  Majorly, with a capital M, because of where this deal is headed. Now Paul unrolls his plan b in the most careful and cunning and crafty language with very carefully planned stages and timings of what could be said to whom and when without caving in this house of cards deal, and the crazy thing is, he just barely does it, but he does it. As I said, he’s saving his own ass, trashing the person and message of Jesus in favor of his completely invented and connived Christ message.

Then he decides to take it to the next level, and teaches that obeying the Roman authorities is the equivalent to obeying god. Paul curries the favor of the Roman occupiers. Paul himself is a Jew, but an honorary Roman citizen by birth because of his father. He knows an opportunity when he sees one. Judaism and Jesus, both of whom clearly stood opposed to the Roman occupation, are left in the dust, and the followers of Paul, now called ‘Christ’-ians are off to the races, even courting the favor of the Roman regime. Problem is though that the Romans are on record for killing Jesus for sedition against Rome.  Paul knew the Romans couldn’t embrace a religion, whose founder they had in fact had killed. That would leave the Romans guilty of deicide, which is killing god. Paul is forced to change this story, by blaming Jesus’ death on the Jewish leaders in order to absolve the Romans of any blame in it, saying that Pilate and the Roman soldiers simply carried out the demands of the Jewish leaders.  It’s now late in Paul’s life, and many decades after the murder of Jesus, with Paul’s non Jewish followers not having much sensitivity to such racist claims, that such a ludicrous idea could hold a shred of credibility.  Paul would have been himself crucified if he had tried to pull of any of this earlier in the game. So there you have it, Christianity now went Roman.

DF:  Triple wow, so now, 2000 years later, the story is finally unraveling…

W:  Big time, Father. For me, this story rings really true, but still, many questions came up for me around my conditioning. What about the accounts in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?  But then I learned that these were all written decades after Paul unveiled his new religion, not prior, as they appear to be because of their placement as the first books of the New Testament. By the time of the gospel writings, Paul’s gospel has for decades been center stage, Jesus following has long been marginalized and even demonized and now it is Paul’s own loyal followers, who set out to write accounts of Jesus life to fit their very Pauline agenda. Not one of the gospels are written by any supposed disciple and contemporary of Jesus, as most Christians assume.  Had they been written anytime near the life of Jesus when the readers who knew of Jesus or his movement would have loudly protested and rejected these accounts would simply have not found the light of day.  Instead, now, 5 and 6 decades after the life of Jesus, we have a perfect climate for the writers of those gospels to insert into the mouth of Jesus the necessary pieces to make this all fly. Like the saying goes ‘History is written by those in power.’

DF:  And by now, those in power are jumping onto the best boat afloat and that meant Paul’s deal.

W:  Totally, nothing else was paying the bills and to this day, nothing has compared, in western society at least, to what Paul got off the ground over his lifetime and others took up and grew it to the mammoth proportions of Big Box Religion. Even business patterned itself after Paul’s deal, not to mention morality, or most all of our social structures, money, and on and on goes the list…

DF:  And you once thought Paul was the most devout and holy guy in the room.

W:  I did. I really did. I didn’t just think it. I ‘knew’ it way down deep inside. It’s what I was taught, and believed and gave my life to, and drew my self-worth from, along with the 2 billion people who presently call themselves Christians of one stripe or another.

DF:  Until you saw through it…

W:  …and Paul’s Christ became nothing more than a con artist’s farce perpetrated upon the human race for the last 2000 years.

DF: This is so striking and far-reaching. It changes so much. I can’t even begin to comprehend all that this now reveals.

W:  I can’t even begin to know what to do with it, Father.  For anyone who isn’t ready to see it, it is likely to remain hiding in plain sight, or at least that’s the way it has been up till now.

DF:  This is one of those things, Wayne, where just one soul, and one more, seeing through this hoax, and taking it into their hearts and lives, and coming free has a multiplication effect. You will see the complete downfall of Christianity in your lifetime. I firmly believe that. I’m surprised every day that its’ inertia keeps it coasting along as it does.

W:  What is there that I can say to the Christian reading this, and who suspects what I’ve shared is true?

DF:  You can tell them to honor themselves, and honor the people around them by choosing to leave, putting feet to that choice and letting their lives be a part of a new day. You can tell them to honor the time they needed to be beholden of Paul’s Christ, as part of their own search for the divine, and to honor this time the human race needed, and to graciously accept this dawning knowledge as their soul’s graduation into more life, more learning, more quest into what’s real and what isn’t.

W:  Thank you, Father. Thank you for feeling this story.

DF:  Thank you for telling it.

W:  I’m not sure we got to what’s tweaking me though about this story.

DF:  I think we did, Wayne.

W:  What’s that?

DF:  It’s a prophetic sense of what is soon time to be dawning on collective consciousness. You sharing this is part of the undermining and collapse of the pillars of the faith, and those reading this and taking it in, is all a part of the great change. If you thought Christianity’s stranglehold on the human race was intense, wait till you behold humanity’s liberation from Christianity.

W:  So, it’s a wait and see, then.

DF:  In one sense, yes, but in another, it’s a living and alive reality unfolding now. You get to see it now because it is given to you to see, and to help others ready to see. This is a first-fruits of deep and profound change. If you’re up for it, that is?

W:  I’m up for it.

DF:  Then fasten your seatbelt and get ready for the ride, because it is going to pick up noticeably and surprisingly.

Raphael Awen is co-creator and facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Visit the SoulFullHeart website  for more information about virtual sessions with him.

I Am Many And We Are One: Divine Father Dialogues Day 26

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

Wayne's Mandala

 

W: Hello Divine Father.

DF: Hello Divine Son.

W: Yes, thank you. I do feel divine at times, other times not as much. It’s really cool though to be reminded that I am divinity expressing in the world, and that I can connect with you as a son.

DF: Let’s do that today.

W: Which brings me to what I’d like to talk with you about today.

DF: What’s that?

W: You mentioned yesterday about having healthy boundaries, and that made me feel how historically with people I’ve struggled between wanting to be totally direct and call a spade a spade, as they say, and being the way I learned to be in customer service, well liked and chosen for the contract and paid well, and all of that. That polarity seems to have followed me to the present day. So today, I journaled with the 2 parts of me who have held each end of that, and we all felt we wanted to get your input around healthy boundaries and see what they look like in action?

DF: I think we could have fun with that today, Wayne. Where would you start it off?

W: How about I just dive in around my quandaries and you can feel how to respond?

DF: Totally.

W: Okay. There’s the quandary about what to do with something I really dislike in a person or something they said. I’m already feeling the answer has to do with a middle way between love and truth telling, but I could use some guidance and coaching on that one for sure. Then there’s a reticence I feel to be direct when there is something I fear losing from the person. All those years of not being emotionally honest with clients let me win the contract, but took a toll on my deeper desired way of being in relationships. I had to enter a role that had some real me in it, but also had something I no longer want with people.

DF: I so get, Wayne, the feeling of wanting to shed a layer of something that once served you, felt like who you were then, but simply feels clumsy and awkward today. Let me ask you, what does it feel like you’d want most to change for you relationally?

W: It feels like, Father, what I’d really like is to find this middle ground of being where it doesn’t take much debate inside, where it simply flows in a balance of embodied truth telling and real care for the person, as well as for myself, advocating for what I want and don’t want.

DF: I think we could end the conversation right here, Wayne, because you said it all in a nutshell.

W: I did.

DF: You did.

W: But I didn’t say I found it, I said I want to find it.

DF: I’m just feeling how you’ve done your homework on this one, and you are already at the deep desire stage, which is what comes just before the new opening. Your next step is simply walking that out in the situations that life puts across your path.

W: Does that mean you don’t want to talk about it?

DF: Well, hold on, let’s see what’s in the tank to help out with….

W: Thank you.

DF: Boundaries are the line between you and the other person, you and the world, you and I for that matter. While it is true that we are all one and the lines between us are not real on one level, it is also true that we are unique and distinctly separate beings. Both are true. The analogy that feels real to me is that while the body has many distinct members or parts, if one of those members suffer, then all the members suffer. Collectively, we are one. Individually, we are also one. Did you get that?

W: Not sure I did.

DF: Not sure I did either, to tell you the truth, so I was hoping you got it. Downloading like this takes paying attention, even for me.

W: You said that collectively as well as individually, we are one. That’s interesting. What I feel in that is that it could be said in another way; collectively and individually, we are many, from which arises our oneness.

DF: And oneness doesn’t exclude individuality, but rather enhances it and backlights it. So, what you are seeking help with today is as an individual who wants to take responsibility for what he is putting in to the collective oneness. That’s oneness contributing to oneness again. Cool huh?

W: I think so, but I’m not sure I’m getting your point. Is it one of those things that I need to meditate on to let in deeper?

DF: I’m not really sure of my point either, Wayne. I told you, you already had this figured out, but you still wanted to talk, so I just figured to feel it together and see where it takes us. I suspect it will turn up something good, but I can’t guarantee it. It’s up to both of us as well as the universe.

W: I’m good with that actually, really good, in fact. Fresh home-cooked is way better than canned.

DF: Okay, hang on, something’s coming. I think we got onto why all it takes is one. I know that’s a pretty saying, but this has some traction here. If the oneness of the individual contributes to the oneness of the collective, then all it takes for that to be initiated into consciousness is for it to be embodied in one, and oneness takes it into being.

W: Are you saying that I could single handedly change the world?

DF: Yes and No. It takes the whole world to change the world, as seed and plant and soil and air and sun are needed. While that’s true, what is also true is that any change that comes into the world always begins as a single seed. So, in this, every action and choice you make are sending out waves of deep change into the collective as single seeds being introduced into consciousness. You changing you, changes the collective and is an essence of the oneness you all are together.

W: So none of us are out changing one soul at a time here?

DF: The only soul that can be changed one soul at a time is yours, you to you. And if you change, all change.

W: I can’t help but feel an energy that counters the energy you are feeling though, Father. I mean, the more I have changed, the more undesirable humanity, at times, has felt to me. It felt like I left them behind, rather than changed them.

DF: But the humanity you embody means that you changed humanity’s way of being by embodying it in seed form, that was planted by your being, in real time, in real human relationships and circumstance. I think, Wayne, what the universe is offering, as we wade into feeling this domain together about healthy boundaries is that you and everyone of your kind is actually so much bigger than you have until now conceived, but is now unstoppably dawning on your horizon. You are simply an early adopter of what humanity itself is desiring. You didn’t come up with this quandary of how to be more authentic and agile in relationships. The universe came up with it and you volunteered. The entire human race and universe holds the desire.

W: So that makes me a vessel, as we used to say in Christianity.

DF: … a true vessel of honor, for sure. Divinity, no less.

W: Okay, Christianity would choke on that part.

DF: It takes all of humanity choking on this part to finally come to it.

W: So there’s a time factor though that we need to get some patience around?

DF: Not for you, Wayne. You get to have it now. I mean, does that feel real?

W: I get to be a first partaker like you said yesterday, and that is having it now, because I’m holding it for all, not just for me. When the all comes to living it out in conscious reality is not when my fulfillment kicks in. It kicks in now. And my future now won’t be any better as my present now.

DF: I’m surprised by where this went today, Wayne. I figured we were going to talk about healthy boundaries in some other way, but somehow, this piece was needed first and all I can say is stay tuned, and to be continued. My down loader needs a break.

W: I will stay tuned. Thank you for this ride. I’ll be looking forward to where we go. This one doesn’t feel complete.

DF: Time for a siesta.

W: Si, Senor.

Wayne Vriend is a co-founder of Soulfullheart Community, healer and author of 90 Days With Yeshua. Visit soulfullheart.com for more information.

Every Relationship Is a Cultivated Cult With A Culture: Divine Father Dialogues Day 22

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

Wayne's Mandala

W: Good Morning Divine Father.

DF: Good Morning Wayne.

W: That was so good yesterday, it’s still moving through me. I had curiosity coming up in my dreams last night.

DF: I don’t think we finished it either.

W: No, I think we just ‘decoupled’ cuz we were full.

DF: Where to now, Wayne?

W: I was hoping you knew.

DF: I think you have a tab on what’s next, or let’s wait a moment till you do.

W: Yeah, you’re right. I think I do. A part of me, Marvin actually, was feeling this morning as we lay awake before dawn, in the birdsong that he missed connections with people from my past, to share the kind of curiosity that we spoke about yesterday. Then we felt how when people hold judgments about us, how that curiosity isn’t allowed out to play and dance between us. I mean, Marvin holds that it’s a cool thing to be curious about even if the person stayed in one place and hardly changed a thing. Like, how is that done? But, when people feel my path isn’t valid because of my beliefs or values or choices, that leaves us really no ground on which to dance, except maybe some kind of oppressive polite niceness.

DF: What do you make of that, as you call it ‘oppressive polite niceness’ when it’s energized by people towards you?

W: It feels very much like a learned behaviour, that I am all too familiar with, having become skilled in it for much of my life. And it feels very cult-like, too. It has all the markings of a cult.

DF: I know you’ve thought through the subject of cults, Wayne. I recall you and Yeshua discussing it in a really alive way. I’d like to discuss it with you some more and see where we might take it.

W: I’d like that a lot.

DF: Why don’t you start off by sharing where you’ve already come to in your not-so-mainstream picture of cults?

W: Okay. Let’s see if I can encapsulate it. Well, first off was the assertion that when any two or more of us enter a relationship, we are actually forming a cult. I know, people’s definition for the word cult doesn’t fit that, but therein lies a deep misunderstanding about relationships. What we tend to refer to as cults are the proven harmful ones, but in that projection, we are able to project onto them the harm that we are in fact responsible for inside of the many cults we have joined. Every relationship has it’s own ‘culture’, that is ‘cultivated’ which is the essential nature of worship; the need to belong and to conform to get love and to avoid rejection, same exact stuff that makes up a monster cult. In other words, none of us get to not belong to cults. Just belonging to humanity is a cult in itself. Just ask any other animal.

There’s the human cult, the family cult, the country cult, the mate-ship cult, the workplace cult, the school cult, the friends cult, the men cult, the women cult, and on and on. If we can accept this fact, then we can finally own and take responsibility for how we are treating others and how we are letting ourselves be treated. Short of that awakening, we are simply playing out other people’s uninteresting, unexamined and far too often repeated stories. Does that about cover it, Father?

DF: Just about…what I’d add to that is the piece about not only are cults the place where harm occurs, they are the only place where any good can occur. Considering that the human is a social animal, and gets their needs met only through relationship and interaction, then joining a cult is your only hope. Best though to find one you like, and examine the ones you’re in.

W: It’s like, Father, how we discussed that any and all healing comes through the agency of relationship (with self, others and the divine). It’s cool, Christopher pointed out yesterday that the root of the word curiosity is not only from the root of ‘care’, but also from the same root of ‘cure.’ Care and cure comes to us by the agency of alive relationship based in true curiosity. Those stuck in any cemented belief structure can’t embody true curiosity because they are focused on paving the world over. No relationship needed there, only surrender to empire and dictatorship.

DF: Which really gets to a defining point, Wayne. Well, let’s summarize a moment and then see where the point fits. First, we’re all in cults, several in fact. Awake to that. Take responsibility for that. Cults cause great harm for the very same reason they can cause great healing. It’s because they are people in relationship and connection.

What makes for the difference and definition between a harmful or a healthy cult is the degree of true curiosity about the world, about people, about love, about relationships. Any group bent on recruiting members is long past whatever formation they may have had in a phase of true curiosity, and is now entrenched in packaging ‘Thee Truth’ with a capital ‘T.’ There is so strikingly little actual relating going on in that cult, be it any cult of two or more, that it is a wonder it can persist into the future. There’s a curiosity right there.

W: So you’re saying that say a couple for instance, or a friendship that has lost it’s curiosity about each other is into this dead and harmful phase where they have lost any awareness of the power of relationships, for either great good or great harm, or anything in between.

DF: It’s a pretty simple test really. Curiosity in relationships is so nourishing in its’ presence and so impoverishing in its’ absence.

W: So, Father, what do we do with the cults we’re in that we unknowingly and even quite innocently signed up for, that don’t feel alive anymore?

DF: Well, first, I’d say, let go of the ‘bloom where you’re planted’ idea. You done bloomed here a long time ago and all that’s left is a husk and maybe a burial. You need to do what any sane person does on a sinking ship or in a burning building is find an exit, or a lifeboat. You may have unconsciously got in, but you need to consciously get out. That means getting you out of the cult and getting the cult out of you and doing whatever it takes to affect that. Of course, it will be costly, but remaining in the harmful cult will cost you more, and only someone suicidal, and lost in self hatred would remain upon realizing where they are.

W: What about all the painful relationship losses involved?

DF: Cult members who are embedded deeply in the cult don’t have any good will, let alone curiosity about some one whose bailing on the cult. You can’t expect them to. Only someone on the edge of leaving like you would have any resonance with your choices and choose to leave with you. Most though, when they are faced with the choice of leaving you or leaving the cult, it’s the cult that wins out almost all the time. Anything different is very rare. That’s because humans aren’t actually able to be outside of cults. Even the individual all by them self is made up of several parts, who are in a culture together, hence a cult, otherwise known as a personality.

W: This is good stuff, Father.

DF: Hey, man. This is our cult. We gotta keep it running on the good stuff.

W: I guess it is our cult, huh?

DF: Sure it is, Wayne. Every relationship is totally and completely a cult, that needs to be acknowledged, seen for what it is, and taken accountability for what it is producing and spreading in the world.

W: So, if it’s unavoidable to do life without doing cults, then we need to embrace that fact. I guess I’m repeating myself, Father. Do you know what edge I’m trying to get at just now?

DF: Hang in there, it’ll come back.

W: It’s coming back. Okay, the big bad cult I joined and gave a bunch of myself too, and who did me harm and all of that….I joined that, I stayed in that, I gave strength to that, I put money in that, I was part of the harm it did to others, I loyally spurned the others who left, just by staying, and in it all, I pulled the trigger on true curiosity. And if I did all that, then it wasn’t done to me. That means I’m not a victim. If anything, I victimized myself. Yes, there were harmful assholes in the cult who hurt me, but I let them. I approved the harm I received.

DF: Yes! Which means the pain and the harm was all about learning.

W: And the learning could only and ever be all about love.

DF: Because love is the sole and only substance in the universe. Harm only serves to define and offer a contrast to love.

W: So, when you’re ready, celebrate the cult you joined, that arguably diminished you. The only reason it could diminish you is because you are in fact so much bigger and you needed and even chose the experience, in order to come to terms with this bigness. No cults, no growth.

DF: We may not be done with this one, Wayne, may need to pick it up tomorrow.

W: Maybe we’ll never be done on this one.

DF: Good point. Cults are popping up by the second.

W: Like beans in the garden. I think it’s my turn to water.

DF: Hasta Manana?

W: Yes, hasta manana.

Wayne Vriend is a co-founder of Soulfullheart Community, healer and author of 90 Days With Yeshua. Visit soulfullheart.com for more information.