Tag: father and son relationships

Healing The Patriarchy From Within

Published on by Gabriel Heartman1 Comment

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Years ago, early in my healing process, I needed to take time away from family. I needed to feel myself outside the familial conditioning to really get a good feel for who I, Gabriel, really was. I needed to feel the ways in which I had been influenced to perceive myself and the world around me. This was especially true for my relationship to my father as he played a big part in my masculine conditioning and relationship to others, both male and female. He had many different effects on me that formed wounded aspects inside myself. I needed to hold and feel those parts of me as a new father template in order to relate differently to the world and others around me.

I remember as a boy my mother would tell me at times how much my father would remind her of his father, my grandfather. I remember feeling that in my own self as I became older, taking on so many physical and personal mannerisms. Taking on the family male legacy of anger and alcohol, the perception of women, and the internalizing of the patriarchal need for control and reason. As my parents divorced and my mother remarried, I took in another father figure that had just as much influence but in different ways. The Inner Father imprint was becoming embedded and it had its effect on my own sense of authenticity.  Who was I really when I was trying to listen to my own internalized father figure?

This part of us takes on a 3D patriarchal energy that comes from the more collective psychic wounding. It is one that has influenced my relationships with women and men. It has filtered my receptivity and openness to possibilities. My own inner feminine was a kept maiden, not feeling safe enough to express and emote. My inner child was suppressed to keep things in a serious and logical framework. Not much play in the world of the patriarch.

But in the unearthing and untangling of the inner father, you find the reasons for it all. There is no bad guy in the process of healing and integrating. Going into my own inner father wounds, I could feel the grander heart of the Masculine at large. The power of sovereignty and compassionate truth-telling. The desire to end the war within and be in collaborative balance with the feminine.  I could feel the the edges of my unworthiness and the real fear of surrendering to what needs to be reflected back at me as part of my growth and opening heart.

Through the process, my inner father takes a step to the side of me and becomes more of a brother, and then as the defenses soften, a younger, more boyish quality comes in and he begins to feel like a son.  I could feel my own biological father in more of his essence, encouraging me to continue on my healing journey and becoming like a guide to me along the way. It is a remaking of the past within the present moment where all things truly exist. A healing that has quantum effects between our hearts and souls and those of the collective father and son relationship.

The harder, less flexible side of me began to soften, be less defensive and more reflective. It has become less linear and more open to surrendering to the moment and letting the flow of life have its way while still holding personal will and desire in the mix.  When I do feel this energy arise I can feel what is underneath the frustration and need for control. Usually a deep wound of feeling powerless and overwhelmed in a world that feels like survival is the only reason to be alive. As I connect more with the Divine Father inside me. the more my own inner father can rest and let go of his Reign, which can feel very existential to them as the control is all they have ever known.

In the letting go, the suppressed feminine energies within can arise and begin to dance with the healing masculine and create a balanced energy that can penetrate while letting go of the outcome and the need for a particular result. It opens the heart to a more dynamic and authentic relationship with women in general and more specifically in a co-creative sacred union partnership. It shifts the collective patriarchal energetic structure and helps lead a new paradigm of leadership and stewardship of a New Earth and New Sacred Humanity.

Gabriel Heartman is an emoto-spiritual men’s and women’s facilitator, energy healer, writer, poet, and heartist with the SoulFullHeart Way of Life.  Visit https://www.soulfullheartwayoflife.com for more information about space holding sessions, group calls, videos, community, etc.

Visit our patreon page to offer a money donation to support our offerings at https://www.patreon.com/soulfullheart.

 

On ‘Father’s Day’: The Process Of Letting In Sacred Masculine Frequencies

Published on by Kasha Rosa1 Comment

by Kalayna Colibri

cosmic sun

 

I feel Him offering me His arms when my heart aches for a mate connection. I feel Him offering me His heart when parts of me need healthy ‘dad’ energy. I feel Him energizing healthy sexuality and beholding of me as woman. I feel Him in my beloved male friends and teachers in SoulFullHeart, offering me connections with men who aren’t afraid to go INward, seeking and finding parts and soul aspects of them that need healing, with an undying curiosity and love that then gets to overflow to me in connection with them. I have experienced so much healing and softening because of the love I get to share with these men who look at their shadows and bring love to me that is clean.

Yet it wasn’t always this way for me.

In 2011, my birth father passed away. His passing was a year before I started my SoulFullHeart process, and yet even then I had a sense of reality around my relationship with my father… that many tones and frequencies that I needed as a growing, budding woman were missing in my relationship with him. I experienced a lot of intense grief when he died, and over time I began to realize that some of this grief wasn’t really about losing ‘him’ but about lost opportunities in our relationship. Parts of me were actually quite angry with him for having ‘bailed’ before he ever became the father to me that he could have been. I’ve had process too around how he could never really see me, especially as a woman, and how he hadn’t been able to energize anything healthily towards me about my budding sexuality, offering me no healthy template for what I was looking for in a mate. I don’t hold my father in contempt around any of this anymore, as this was clearly a contract we both signed up for and quite frankly it feels like without these and many other voids and gaps in our relationship this life, maybe I wouldn’t have been as compelled towards the growth trajectories I’ve now been on that have made me who I am today.

Letting in the Sacred Masculine in the form of guides and as I mentioned, sacred friendship, vulnerable teacher/student, (and soon!) a sacred union relationship, has been a deep process for me of feeling through these ways in which my own father couldn’t ‘show up’, feeling how this relates for parts of me to the Divine Father and also to mates, and working with ‘inner father’ frequencies of patriarch and also masculine protectors. I’ve had blocks to truly being able to see, feel and experience the sacred masculine in its beautiful willingness to get messy and tangle with whatever it needs to in order to discover itself anew, its ability to feel and embrace the sacred feminine without wounded frequencies of control, belittling, distancing, or abuse of any kind, and its embracement of the mirror that allows it to go back into itself, finding the shadow pieces it needs and wants to work, coming out the other side with even more sense of personal power and potency. The sort of masculine frequencies that make you go ‘RAWR!’ in response to its lovingly penetrative energy and melt into its open-hearted desire for you to be the woman you are meant to be, in all of your curves and softness and self-discovery and healing of your own, in response, in an exquisite partnered dance, through leaning into the organic (and orgasmic) leadership of the authentic and vulnerable King…

It does feel as if we can miss out on letting in these incredible energies, even as they knock on our heart doors, wanting to come into us, to love up our entire being, if we aren’t willing to look at our relationship with our birth fathers. It’s a brave journey and one that can be quite hard too, yet with the right support from those who have been there, like those of us in SoulFullHeart, it is held in the sacredest of spaces and at a rate and pace that you and your parts are ready for. The yumminess of what I am able to let in more and more now, only lights me up more as I continue to feel it and feel the unfolding mystery of its unfolding in my life. There is no single definition that describes it and in its ever arising love and creativity, I feel so much warmth and comfort for my healing woman’s heart and my ever-deepening femininity. I feel how this could be true for all women who embrace the process of feeling the mark of their birth fathers and also other masculine influences in their lives, but I also feel this for men, who so feel to be aching for something missing inside of themselves that they long to experience, that is so different than how their own fathers were or are.

The sacred masculine wants to offer you space to explore yourself within it, providing a dock for your self-made container for all of the YOU-ventures that await you. And if it’s truly ‘time’ for you to do so, you won’t be able to ignore the clarion call of the fire and love it wants to gift you with to help you illuminate and be with your personal process of opening your ever-healing heart. ❤

 

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Kalayna Colibri is a SoulFullHeart facilitator for women around (and under) the age of 30, energy healer, indigo-crystal bridge, writer, and poetess. Visit soulfullheartwayoflife.com for more information about space holding sessions, group calls, videos, community, etc. Visit our patreon page to offer a money donation to support our offerings at https://www.patreon.com/soulfullheart.

 

A Son’s Ending, A Man’s Beginning

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

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Male By Birth; Men By Journey

By Wayne Vriend

I originally wrote the following piece in March, 2010, and published it on a previous blog. I wanted to share it again as healing the wounds between men and their fathers (whether possible in person or in spirit) is so foundational and critical to our healing into authentic male expression.

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It had been over two and half years and I had not been back since the day of the funeral, until today.

I took myself, my backpack, my umbrella and a piece of plastic to sit on and set myself down, right on top of the grave. I was reminded of the times I was too young to remember of sitting on Dad’s stomach. I felt welcome and belonging here now. I snugged my umbrella over me as the rain was lightly falling.

I unloaded the green stemmed purple crocus potted plant with the fuchsia wrapping, that I had purchased on the way out, in front of the headstone. The light rain was opening their blooms. The colors of it all fit well with the maroon color of the headstone, which I took in for the first time. The front read simply ‘VRIEND,’ and on top ‘Jim Vriend 1934-2007,’ and ‘safe now in the arms of Jesus,’ and ‘Loving husband, father and grandfather.’

I looked at the photo of my dad in his early seventies attached to the wrought iron prop. He had bright blue eyes and a boyish alive playful happiness. Here is where we rested his body, committed it back to the earth, in solemnity, in ritual, with hymns of the church and a homily of remembrance. We all stood that day. Today, I sat down, on the earth, and remained there for the better part of two hours.

My father had attended church every week of his life, and felt a palpable connection to God, and remained his entire life not too far from the safety and comfort of his family upbringing. I’d often chafed with him in my desire and decision to explore beyond the bounds of safety. I’d often tried to be nice and not so antagonistic and hoped in exchange that he’d see my soul for who I am, in the hope I could see more of myself. I always felt crazy for not being able to overcome the wall between us.

Today, however, I felt the wall was dissolved between us, like it had simply never been.

I breathed in and out the incense I had lit that was wafting in my face. I read aloud the words again before me: ‘Safe in the arms of Jesus.’  I said, “Dad, how I longed to feel safe in your arms.”  His pained eyes felt my pain, and bouncing shoulder sobs shook me. My pain mingled with his pain for the joy he missed in not knowing me in this way, and for his not being known by his father in this way.

For the first time, the anguish became ours.

I shared with him a piece of treasured driftwood I brought and a jade stone, both of which reminded me of his love and familiarity for the earth. He accepted them with an ocean of gratitude, and we shared eye to eye tears over the gifts we had not up until now been permitted to give and receive.

The rain subsided along with my tears and I set aside my umbrella and jacket.  I said to the spirit of my father, “Dad, so much of my life, even to this day, has been shaped by the attempt at trying to feel your deep approval, your love, and admiration.”

He paused, and then replied in a cadence and tone that contained the world, “Son, I can tell you with everything that I am now, I have never ever met a man that I esteem higher than you, in fact you are truly my hero.” The genuineness of his heart and words I ingested easily, and my tears now were of deep gratitude.

The differences in our beliefs and choices in so many areas of life did not even require a debriefing here in the domain of heart and spirit where beliefs often only serve as a wall of protection and alienation.

I paused to drink some of the coffee and eat the bar I had brought with me, not wanting the host in him to fuss.

Eventually I said, through tears, “Dad, I’ll be 49 this year. I’m again embracing more change, and letting go of securities. I know I need to keep food on the table, but living for a job, and a mortgage is not what I am here for. I need to find new courage and I want to ask your help. Dad, will you help me?’

I waited until I felt his response and then let my voice carry his voice through mine, “Son, I would be so honored, and I will do everything in my power to show you, to guide you, to cheer you on in the choices you make.” In the tears that wouldn’t stop, I was able to feel some of the reason we’d been so unable to connect in this life and to give way to the connection I’d need with him now.

The coffee was moving through me, and I didn’t think the cemetery workers across the way would have an issue with me taking a side trip to the bushes. I relieved myself and returned and sat down again, digesting all that had moved in a matter of minutes.

My last visit with my father had been in the hospital, with warm smiles, small talk that differed little from any other visit, and no mention of his soon passing. I felt his true joy at seeing me. The young boy in me was struck by the weakness in his body and the bruising on his arms and legs, a sad contrast from the man I had always admired for his strength. Then his tone and focus changed, sitting up in his bed and with fore finger tapping the hospital table like a pulpit, he exclaimed, “I’m not the one who instituted the family,” reminding me what the Bible teaches about family, and referring to my recent distance from family. I knew he meant well, but I felt the gulf between us and our values (since I had left Christianity a few years earlier along with my marriage) as uncrossable. I kept the visit short and we exchanged back tapping hugs, “I love you,” and “I love you too.” And, I left, aching for so much more.

Here though, perched on his grave, there was no awkwardness, no taboo subjects, no inabilities to simply ask for what we wanted from each other, no fear of our angst, no withholding of our forgiveness and our apologies. There was just love that filled the space that gave rise and fall to words to assist the love.

It was evident we had both taken in all we could.

I remembered singing his favorite hymn “Amazing Grace” at the funeral. I sang a few lines now as I gathered up my things and got up. As I took in the scene and caught my breath, I realized that my dad and I had just met for the first time. I said to him, “Yeah, Dad, grace really is amazing.’

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