Tag: SoulFullHeart

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

Published on by Jelelle AwenLeave a comment

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By Jelelle Awen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bok Choy Cabbage Rolls-

Cabbage Rolls:

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

one cup of cooked brown or wild rice

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

one half daikon radish, chopped

stems of bok choy leaves (if using), chopped

cilantro, cumin, soy sauce to taste

Asian Sauce:

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

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

Eggs In A Nest-

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

2 cups uncooked brown rice

Olive oil

medium onion, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, minced

carrots, chopped

daikon radish, chopped

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

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

soy sauce, cumin, and salt to taste

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

Guacamole Salsa-

2 large ripe avocados, seed removed

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

1 red tomato

handful of cilantro

Juice from one lime or lemon

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

cumin and salt to taste

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

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

Brace for Impact: Life at El Rancho

Published on by Jelelle AwenLeave a comment

 brace for impact

By Jelelle Awen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back To Me: Feeling The Emotional Root Cause Of Illness And Injury

Published on by Gabriel HeartmanLeave a comment

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By Christopher Tydeman

In the moment, I am on my back. For the past ten days I have been mostly on my back. At some point I strained a muscle and it has caused much pain in sitting and generally moving around. Except when I am laying on my back. My first response was to determine the origination of the injury from a physical stand point. While there was definitely a physical component, doing a strenuous exercise before I was ready and not having strong core muscles, in SoulFullHeart we ask ourselves what was the larger emotional preursor to the injury. Since the emotional body is connected to the physical body, there is an emotional root cause. Now, I could look at it energetically, in terms of a dis-ease in my first chakra, which is true, and get some relief through some energy work, but that still doesn’t take me to the deeper layer, where if left unfelt, would just come back around again at some point in my life. I have not truly “healed” myself; I just kicked the can down the road.

All the physical and energetic remedies should come secondary to the emotional. Now, if I was in absolute pain, I would self-lovingly find relief, but I would still need, and desire, to feel the emotional root at some point afterward. I have been doing exercises and using cold and hot compresses to aid in my recovery, but I have been offered to feel what the injury brings up for me. What is my back trying to tell me? What part of me needs me to feel it so I can help heal its wounds? What is the greater context to being in this state of incapacitation? If I spent my time taking drugs, watching movies, or trying to solve my “problem”, I am missing out on a sacred gift.

How could back pain be a gift? A part of me would ask the same question. But by asking some questions and being vulnerable, we get to feel a bigger relationship to life. What was happening in my life when the injury occurred? What was I suppressing or resisting? How do I feel about myself in this state? Where do those feelings come from? Are they really mine or do they come from a part of me that has held them? What can I offer this part of me to feel that it has a safe place to express itself? What is my current connection to the Divine and what support and guidance can I let in? These are SoulFullHeart questions. They bring in much more consciousness than what western culture in general would just see as a situation to fix or something to power through.

In my case, before the injury I was feeling a deep tension around this new chapter of my life. I left Canada with my SoulFullHeart family to exodus from the unsustainable culture of the western world and seek sanctuary in Mexico for its climate and ideal growing conditions. It was also a choice to feel myself differently, more authentically, away from the conditioning and comfort zone of that world. Who could I be? Who would I be when all the default toggles and switches didn’t work anymore? This brought an immense control/fear response from a part of me as I engaged in the journey from Canada, crossing borders, driving in a foreign country, trying to communicate with minimal Spanish, not knowing whether our desired destination would work for us or if we would be welcome. There was a sense of just surviving each day for a part of me, holding a need for control and knowing. I did not have much authentic me in the room to feel the joy and the adventure, as well as the fear from this part.

As we eventually found a welcome home at Rancho Amigos, we had to find a temporary home in nearby Tomatlan until the home we are staying at on the ranch is ready. This is where I feel the tension swelled and pooled up in my lower back and created the perfect condition for a part of me to be felt in its fear. It also created the space for me to reconnect to the Divine Mother, which had been lacking for some time. I have needed this time to feel my desire for being in community with those who see and encourage my bigness and gifts, being in connection with the Divine and the context and love that comes with that, and being in relationship to my parts that need to feel me holding them in all they need to be held in.

Being immobile brought me to feelings of inadequacy, frustration, control, burden, and a need to ‘do’ to in order to feel my value and worth. I began to journal with a part of me that had the voice of punishment and judgment. This is a big place for me to go, as it has been a lifelong crucible for me to value my own worth and feel my own power. This is amplified in community when others are having to do a little more to make up for the resting body, and to feel the love with which they do it because you are genuinely cared for. THAT is what ultimately triggers the underlying lack of worth. That is the water that brings up the oil that Kathleen referred to in her last blog.

I am still in dialogue with this part of me. It takes time for them to feel comfortable enough to really feel the depth of the pain that they hold. But it is starting place from which true healing and transmutation can happen. Over time, the voice and energy will soften, transform, and integrate. It will lead me to my true power, in heart and spine. Hmmm. Interesting. This is something I would not have felt if I hadn’t gone into the emotional and spiritual aspect of this injury. That my back represents my growing spine, my inherent self-authorized power and creativity, and my energetic ground to the earth below me. Wow. How cool.

With resting parts, a new wave of creativity has been unearthed in me. A desire to reclaim my heartistry through designing meaningful mandalas for myself, for others, and the Divine. I have felt my authentic desire to be a healer, to claim my place within an intensely beautiful community, and to feel the greater context of what this life has to offer. There will still be moments of uncertainty, doubt, and fear, but through this experience I will have more of me to be able to be with that. This, I’m sure, will be a gift that will keep on giving “back” to myself.

So the next time you find yourself sick or injured, I hope you find some inspiration to ask yourself some bigger questions. Questions that may lead you to take stock of the why and get you on a path to truly healing yourself authentically and consciously. If you wish to know more, visit our website at www.soulfulheart.com to learn about our body consciousness retreat in April that focuses on this type of conscious, integrative healing. It will change the way you relate to your body, heart, and soul. Guaranteed.

Christopher Tydeman is a SoulFullHeart facilitator and healing arts facilitator.

2013: A Death and Rebirth Into Real Love

Published on by Gabriel Heartman

By Christopher Tydeman

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I found myself in many different emotional places, as I had to calibrate to a new way of being and feeling in the world.  Who was I without this old filter?  What do I do?  How do I be?  All questions that make up the quest of surrender.

I started to write about all the content that happened to me in 2013, but realized there was a context to it all.  Last year was a year of uncovering my false self and his relationship to a false world, created to keep me small, and him safe.  This world was set on fire so that a new relationship to my authentic self could be born.

For years I had been feeling unfulfilled.  Unsatisfied.  Off center.  Off course.  I had been praying to find myself so I could alleviate this pain.  I had medicated with alcohol, drugs, work, being a father, politics, and relationships.  My soul was sinking in quicksand and needed a way out.  When the student is ready, the teacher appears.  That teacher was SoulFullHeart.

For six months prior to 2013 I needed to go into and feel my pain.  I accessed parts of myself left in trauma from this life and others.  I found myself at a critical time in my life.  Do I continue doing the same things, relating to the same people that can’t offer me the growth I need, or do I keep going on this suffering loop?  At the beginning of the year, I made the choice to jump.

That was the most difficult crucible I had been through my entire life.  To depart a career, family, and friends that a part of me had a codependent and unhealthy attachment to.  If there was something truly real there it would have continued to grow with me.  But it didn’t and it hasn’t up to this date.  It was a dance, and a wrestling, with this part of me to get him to feel how little true love we were actually receiving and letting in.  To this part of me that sounded harsh, but he began to feel it over time.

I found myself in many different emotional places, as I had to calibrate to a new way of being and feeling in the world.  Who was I without this old filter?  What do I do?  How do I be?  All questions that make up the quest of surrender.  At one point I had to go back briefly to my old life to reaffirm this one.

I drew a mate that brought out a part of me that needed to be made conscious so that I could feel those vulnerable places we can’t access unless we are in conscious relationship.  I found the codependency that was linked to my relationship with my mother, and templating from my father.  I had to find my spine, but it had been buried.  We had to complete the relationship for our individual reasons, but have found each other again with new eyes, new heart, and new spine.

I uncovered my personal relationship to the Divine through countless hours of journaling with the Mother.  This connection has been invaluable to me in times of uncertainty and fear.  I have uncovered my SoulFullHeart self through experiences such as hosting a radio show, writing a vulnerable daily blog with my parts, entering a new ground of friendship with my mentors and facilitators, Jillian and Wayne, and beginning to facilitate another person on this path to self-awareness and emotional consciousness.

I have felt myself differently than I ever have.  I still don’t have a clear picture, and maybe never will.  What I do know is that through my experiences over the past year, I feel I am held by the Divine and supported by my SoulFullHeart family and mate.  2014 is a year of adventure and total unknowns.  For the first time in my life, I couldn’t tell you where I will be or who I will be this time next year.  But as long as love is in my heart, it doesn’t really matter.

Christopher Tydeman has been embracing the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life since March, 2012. He is a SoulFullHeart facilitator-in-training, author on this blog, and he hosted the SoulFullHeart Experience Radio Show. Visit soulfullheart.com for more information on SoulFullHeart.

Dying in Submission or Thriving in Surrender?

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

By Wayne

Here’s an important question when it comes to relating to a any group or leader, or religious organization: Are they asking for my submission or my surrender?

If you come to a mentor, or a leader, or a group, whether it’s in the realm of spirituality, business or even family, for support, guidance or direction; putting this question on your radar can make or break your allegiance, as it should.

This question has been a guiding light for me over many years even when it was more subconscious than it was something I could put more words around as I will attempt now. 🙂

When a client comes to work with us in Soulfullheart work, we need them to lean into us, to see us as able to help, to see us a resource. This is true whether you are going to a dentist, an auto mechanic or a priest or pastor, or joining a group of any kind.

But how we, and they, relate to that ‘leaning in’ makes all difference in the world.

A leader who says that they have the truth; energizes that they have deeper knowledge; the path to your truest growth; and that if you lose sight of that, you will have to live with the penalties of being on the outside of their blessing, is using fear to bring and keep you under control and is asking for your submission.

A leader who offers what they have to offer, who even makes a bold claim as to what it can do to help; and invites you to consider it for yourself; who acknowledges that you are a sovereign being; who acknowledges that the healing gifts he or she offers don’t get to go anywhere without the participation of the client or seeker; who energizes no disdain for your choice to say ‘no,’ is asking and waiting patiently for your surrender.

One suppresses your power, the other enlivens it. One is afraid of your bigness, the other welcomes it. One sees your strength as a threat, the other sees it as an asset.

The difference here though is usually not so obvious, or we wouldn’t keep stubbing our toes or breaking our hearts over this question. Here are a few ways to look deeper and ascertain for yourself if the frequencies the group or leader are emitting are more about seeking submission or surrender:

How does the group or leader relate to those who are no longer a part of it? Does it hold more respect or more disdain? This is an important question because ultimately we end up leaving every group we join. And this question you can easily find the answer to before you join.

The other big one is how does the group feel on a transparency level? Most of us are now suspect that the politeness of politicians is a cover for lack of transparency and designed to gain and keep power. This way of being in the world is of course nearing it’s end as more and more of us can see through that for what it is.

Does the group come off as having more of the proud answers to life or instead the humble questions? Are they in the realm of knowing all the time or can they breathe in not knowing?

But let’s say, you’re already in deeper, have been for a good while, with many parts of your family and social and even possibly your financial life tied in in deep ways, and you are increasingly chafing at what feels like leaders being controlling and working to maintain your submission, and even masking that as asking for your surrender. What do you do with that? You might already know that there is no space within the group to openly question the leader without being labeled as disloyal or having a bad spirit, or just not ‘getting it.’ If that’s the case, the question for you isn’t whether the group is healthy or not, but more about how to find the courage to leave.

And that’s the kicker, because the time spent in submission is designed to erode the spine you would need to leave and say ‘no more.’ Alternatively, the time spent in healthy surrender is designed for you to see and determine when the growth you came for is achieved and that you are being called to move on, that you are ready to move on, with some sadness, sure, but not with any implanted fear of failure, lingering trauma, or feeling of being destitute.

Submission erodes your power and takes it from you. Surrender awakens you to your power and enhances your relationship to your own power. Surrender can never be demanded, it can only be freely and powerfully given. Surrender breeds powerful equals, submission breeds underlings.

Soulfullheart would take this question a step farther by asking a couple more questions that look at this same issue as it relates to our relationship with ourselves as well as our relationship to the divine:

“How has a more controlling part of me demanded the submission of the more vulnerable parts of myself?” and a second part to that question: “how has that process enabled me to stagnate in groups that no longer serve me?”

and:

“How has a controlling submission picture inside of me to the divine affected me with allegiance to a false god or an atheistic ‘f-you’ to the divine?”

We create in our outer life what is true in our inner life, and then our inner life moves, and our outer life follows.