Tag: Transformation

Accepting Change As The Only Constant

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

Light bulb

By Wayne Vriend

I’ve been digesting the outrageous news this week: that the government of Cyprus,  an island country in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, is in cahoots with the European Union this week to essentially steal 7% to 10% of people’s savings from their bank accounts. The German leaders actually advocated for taking 40%. I’m sure it’s not the first time, and surely not the last, but things are heating up in our global society. My sense is that this year is a tipping point. The pace of the changes seems so swift on one level, and so slow on another.

Many of us are simply keeping our eyes on the busyness and content of our time and energy demanding lifestyles, and pass off these mildly troubling stories in the news as stuff beyond our control. We say to ourselves, ‘I have plenty to manage here right now, I couldn’t get worked up about this if I tried.’

But, I invite you to ask yourself: What is my relationship to change? How will I be affected by global changes that I can’t control? And, just what do I ‘control’ in relationship to change?

Take a look at the nature of the changes our global society is undergoing. Crisis in capitalism is a big one, with simply too much debt and pretense toppling the money systems, and the ever increasing wealth gap between those living in riches and those living in scarcity. Then there is the related crisis in climate change and global warming. The approaching end of fossil fuels. Poor health where starvation and obesity occur in the same body….just to name a few. Something is unmistakably dying.

Relating to these changes as somehow global, rather than personal, comes from denying our fundamental interconnectedness with everything. People are dying there, not here. There is choking smog in Beijing, not here. That nuclear disaster is on the other side of the planet. That’s like saying, my liver is in pain and having a bad day, but I’m doing fine. If you are alive, you are undergoing and impacted by fundamental change, whether you are conscious of it or not.

The responsible and conscious question is not how can I avoid change, but how can I avoid the pain of being asleep and unprepared emotionally to the changes that are going on around me? How can I learn, grow, and heal and assist others in doing the same, in the midst of these sweeping changes?

You may feel stuck in an immovable lifestyle where it feels like time is a rare commodity. You may feel overworked, under-rested, where your bodies health ‘is what it is,’ and doesn’t feel like any real change is within reach, where friendships ‘are what they are,’ where sex is what it is, and you couldn’t begin to even imagine how they could be meaningfully different. This flat feeling about your life is actually a healthy one, a sign that something is actually working perfectly. You are living in a carefully crafted and chosen way of life, where even your lack of consciousness up until now is an aspect of the necessary plan.

Moving from feeling flat and deeply in survival mode to feeling alive, energized, and experiencing desire, and true pleasure in our lives, is about feeling both how incredibly fast and how incredibly slow the changes actually are. In nature, we see trees standing up for 500 years and lightning that strikes them down in one second. Both are true. Some things about your life will persist until the end of your life, other things will fall away in a surprising moment of swift change.

How you relate to change, rather than seeking to avoid it, is where you have power and soft control. Fearing running out of money to support your current lifestyle and having to face an uncomfortable feeling of low self worth tied to inadequacy can either be an attempt fueling the status quo in your life or it can be a path to letting in healthy change. Whether we are in ‘resistance to change mode’ or ‘letting in change mode’, makes all the difference in the inevitable changes that are coming our way.

In the natural cycles of nature and seasons, If something is dying, that always means that something is being born. Old is always giving way to new. It’s true of your life right now. Your life right now, how it feels to be you, inside of your body, inside of your beliefs and outlook, what you feel about others, about the Divine, about yourself…… is all to do with what you have encountered up until now.

What are you feeling as you read my words? Do they resonate with something inside of you? Do they call out to you to feel deeper? Do they call out to you to connect with me, or to connect with a part of yourself that you haven’t up until now? Are they timely to an answer you have been seeking? This is the change that is under your feet right now, that won’t ever stop. Also, what gives us courage to let in change is to feel what doesn’t change, and to let more of that into your consciousness. Love from the divine, from the universe, and from my dog (who seems to beat me most days on being connected to what is) allows me to find courage to live into and accept change as the only constant in my life.

Visit soulfullheart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life.

Entering and Leaving: In The Birth Canal

Published on by Raphael Awen2 Comments
Photo By Wayne Vriend
Photo By Wayne Vriend

By Wayne Vriend

Mike, whose energy reminded me of a slick Amway promoter, was the recently hired Western Canada Regional Manager for a company boasting to be the largest of its kind in Canada. While driving home, I reluctantly picked up his call after having just pulled up stakes mid way through on a paint job for this company. This is something that I had never even thought of doing in my previous 23 years long subcontracting relationship with the company.

Earlier in the day, I had decided and informed the company that I would not complete a big deadline job unless some reasonable payment was made. I also made this decision after hearing that many other subcontractors and even material suppliers were getting paid very late. Due to this, the job was poorly coordinated, running behind, and contained an energy of chaos, anxiety, and disconnect.

“Hi Wayne, it’s Mike. I also have Darren on the line,” he said, in a voice too loud, too smooth, and too enthusiastic for the situation.  “I said to Darren, let’s get Wayne on the line and see if we can clear this up. I think your invoices just have some dates confused in our system and that should take care of things.”

I sighed inwardly at his assumption. “No, Mike, I checked all of our invoices over carefully with your accounting department months ago. They are correct in your system and they do, in fact, go back over 4 months”

Then, he changed his tack. Softening his voice a little, he said, “Wayne, I’m going to see if I can get you all of this money from our treasury department right away. It may take me a few days though. Would you be willing in the meantime, in good faith in our company, to continue so we can get these people moved back into their home?”

It wasn’t so easy to find my words inside of this barrage of tones and words: a promise to go and get my money from the difficult and elusive treasury department; an appeal to my sense of good faith; and care for others: getting the homeowners moved back into their home.

I managed to find my response after fumbling at first around with my words. “No, MIke, I’m not comfortable with that and it just doesn’t feel self loving to do that. It’s been several broken promises.”

The job was going sideways fast anyway. Material suppliers, subcontractors and employees alike waiting on the sidelines for a corporate nation-wide general contracting company and it’s opaque layers of management and hedge fund ownership to find some heart and soul, and actually lead, or actually care.

When the Titanic hit the iceberg a 101 years ago, there were two precious hours of choice and action time before it finally sunk to the bottom of the ocean. The gravitational pull of denial, and buying into the status quo answer of ‘this ship is unsinkable’, were in fact what caused a much greater loss of life. Those who came to their senses early in the first hour made all the difference, for themselves and for others.

We are in such a time. It is evident wherever you look. My story from this week is not unique.

Our grand capitalist systems; our social systems; our religious and spiritual systems: these that are so dear to our false selves and have enjoyed such huge buy ins from so many, for so long; all these have struck an iceberg. These systems, that once felt so much like home, that animated us, are now in slow motion collapse. Make no mistake, as Captain Smith said so plainly in the movie in response to Rose’s inquiry about their fate; ‘The ship will sink.’

It gets real clear, on a sinking ship, once you’ve accepted what moments ago felt unbelievable even to you, that your first responsibility is to save lives, including your own. What are you choosing today? What are you trusting in today? How do you propose to care for anyone else while denying your first responsibility; to truly care for yourself?

The iceberg is not the problem. The poor design is not the problem. It is all a huge and unexpected gift to us, if we can only surrender to the point of the collapse: being prepared by the circumstance itself to enter our next phase of life.

Our most authentic self is mid stream in the birth canal, between the collapsing story and the rise of a new story, waiting to be born. In order for that to happen, we are being invited to leave the false self systems that we once held so dear and enter into an arising birthing process.  We can’t know what our new self will look like, we can only trust that what we were previously invested in is now complete in it’s purpose to bring us to a deeper choice point and truer reflection of who we were meant to be.

Visit soulfullheart.com for more articles and information about the SoulFullHeart Way of Life.

Moving Out Of Fear And Into Love And Faith

Published on by Gabriel HeartmanLeave a comment

art-hand-heart-couple

By Chris Tydeman and Emmerich

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love Thy Self; Love Thy Shadow

Published on by Gabriel HeartmanLeave a comment

By Sequoia Heartman

Love.  It’s what we are all here to give and receive.  When we think of love we immediately and instinctively think of something or someone outside our self.  A love of art, music, or country.  Or the love of a family member, a close friend, or intimate partner.  All outside the realm of our own being.  But what of the love we seldom hear about?  The love of our own heart, our own soul, our own self.

We have not been taught that this is where true love actually starts.  And by love of self, I do not refer to confidence or self-esteem.  These arise naturally and organically with authentic self-love.  Confidence and self-esteem feel more like false prop-ups to get us through the days, weeks, or months.  Please do not infer that I do not believe in building self-esteem.  Rather I suggest it is just a step in the direction of real self-worth and acceptance.  I encourage all to not stop there.  True self-love is recognizing our shadow, accepting that it is a part of us, and listening to what it has to say.

The conversation may be difficult and very hard to hear.  However, when you allow it space to speak its truth, you have given it something it never had been given before…love.  We hide our shadow.  We ignore it, medicate it, or sometimes hate it.  It has only wanted to be heard and felt.  It doesn’t exist to destroy.  It is actually there to create.  Create a You that you never knew existed.  It may not feel like it from their initial words to you, but over time you will find that it has loved you more than you ever thought anyone on this planet ever has.  It just hasn’t been able to express itself in a healthy way.  It didn’t have a You there to talk to.

Through my SoulFullHeart process I have been led to this shadow part of myself.  Through my arising authentic, sacred Self or SoulFullHeart Self, I have been able to hold space for it.  Listen to it and not be afraid of it.  It is through this work that I find myself in the midst of not only being aware of my own heart, but taking the time to feel it, listen to it, and love it as I would my own child.  The rewards are far greater than the price I paid to get here.  When you feel it for the first time, like I have, you wonder how you ever got along without it.

Sequoia Heartman is an apprentice facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Visit soulfullheartwayoflife.com for more. 

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

Published on by Jelelle Awen1 Comment

By Jillian Vriend

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does your real power and bigness look like?

Published on by Raphael AwenLeave a comment

By Wayne Vriend

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life As A Divine Playground

Published on by Jelelle AwenLeave a comment

By Jillian Vriend

So much of our western world and culture is based on a foundation of fitting in, compliance, and coping. Instead of encouragement to express our individuality and take passionate risks to tell our truth and feel our feelings, we are indoctrinated in the school of conformity, suppression, and making nice with others. We are pressed to get an education, find a career, settle down with a spouse, have kids, buy a house, go on vacations, and eventually retire until the day when we leave this earth. This is considered by many people, especially in the western culture, to be a sign of successful inhabitation of being here and so they feel at rest and in joy with their lives, happily settling into a life of busy content and materialistic gain.

Or do they? If this were true, if this “recipe” for happiness were the real food that we need as humans than why do so many, if you dig beneath the surface numbness, have feelings that would contradict this contentment picture? Beneath the surface lurk those “dark” feelings that we don’t like as a society to address and look at. We prefer to medicate them with happy pills, treat them with behavior modification strategies, buy another image-based item to make us feel better, go see another escapist movie to give us the sense that life could be adventurous yet only in our fantasies. Or we have extramarital affairs, use drugs/alcohol/work/religion to numb us to make it through another day, go on vacations to escape from our daily grind reality.

We prefer to get so busy in a linear, achievement-based life that we have no space and time to feel ourselves or anyone else around us. We prefer to bury the desires and aches that are the source of this dissatisfaction. We prefer to relate to our pain and fear on a surface level rather than dig into the depths of ourselves where perhaps terrifyingly dark and messy emotions and memories may dwell. We prefer our violence on the television or to play out in dusty, remote “third world” countries where we can remove ourselves from the action and cheer for our “country” on the sidelines. We prefer to distance ourselves from the tragic and devastating conditions that the majority of our species suffers in.

I’ve been offered and have experienced myself that as sacred human children of the Divine  we are meant to and capable of much more than this flat line existence based on conformity, disconnect, and achievement created by our false self and the many parts that make it up.

The earth is our playground, offering us a denser existence in which to experience ourselves truly embodied in physicality while at the same time connected to our divine essence. Embracing and becoming aware of both our roots and our wings. On this playground, we get to play, experiment, see what works and see what doesn’t. We get to express who we are, each of us being a spark of individuality in expression here while still being connected as One. We get to relish in the joys of being human- making love, eating food, listening to music, falling in love.

On this playground, we’ve been offered the opportunity (if we choose) to explore intimacy with another person who is separate from us, to join with them in sacred union, and to see how undefended and heart open we can become with each other. Parts of us experience hurts and wounds from being separate in this denser reality and also from the reality of our world being set up the way that it is in this current phase of human evolution. Parts of us have these hurts and yet they are a gift too, because the healing of them offers an ongoing adventure into the terrain of ourselves, especially the unknown and undiscovered aspects of ourselves.

This picture of life as a playground, the one that SoulFullHeart offers, is a shift from the mainstream and preferred one of our western culture. And being that, it’s not for everyone as we all are on our own sovereign journeys with our own reasons for being here with our own things to work out. For those of you who do feel a sense of “yes” to the picture of reality that I am offering here, then you also have a sense perhaps that it is not an easy path to follow, and that it is unknown, painful and scary at times.

Yet, we are not meant to do it alone.

Like-minded and -hearted souls will be drawn to join with you on the journey as you are brave enough to ache for what you want, willing to give up the things that may keep you stuck, and risk to be in vulnerable intimacy with yourself (including your parts and their shadow and wounded sides), with others, and with the Divine.

Also, support is always available from the Divine, which aches to experience us relating in a magical and unbound way to the opportunity of life that they have gifted us with. It does not want us to be stuck in boxes, trapped by how we relate to debt or money, slave to time, and in deep pain and frustration that we cannot seem to successfully numb. It does want to help us experience life as It intended us to, learning from us as we learn from It, loving us as we love It, and with It holding us along the way!

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

Opening Our Blind Eyes

Published on by Raphael Awen3 Comments

Image

By Wayne Vriend

Is it possible that there are things you cannot see right now?

How often are you moved to tears at the wonder and complexity of your physical body for instance?

How often do you feel a love presence coming to you from yourself, or from the Divine, or from another person in your life, to the point of feeling overwhelmed by the love?

If you’re like me, it’s not as often as you’d like.

Could it be that our eyes, our receptors of reality, have been turned down to a frequency that we can bear? To a lower frequency that matches our wounded experiences of this life, and past lives, up till now?

If your answer is ‘yes’ to my question, let me ask you my next question.

What would it take to open our eyes? That is to increase the frequency our eyes transmit and receive at?

My experience is that it takes a process of healing those past wounds. It takes an emotional authentication process, called life, a drama story played out in the real time of your life that allows for the feeling and healing of the past wounds, and embraces and lets in a new space for the new arising story, your unfolding story. It takes feeling the parts of us that are afraid to see yet ache for clearer vision at the same time.

If your answer is ‘no’ to my question about the possibility of there being so much more to see that you have seen till now, then let me ask you one more question.

Is the reason you are still breathing have something to do with proving that your present level of seeing is your highest reality? To prove that you are as attained as possible in this present moment?

I feel a presence in my life that wants to accelerate my ability to let in my next phase. What is my next step in a deeper sense of play, of passion, and of seeing? For me, I sense it is deeply about my own personal journey to see more and help others that ache to see more. I feel it will be about continuing to expand my work in Soulfullheart to individuals and also about speaking to groups about what I see, and how that relates to what they want to see and share . It seems simply true that describing what you see to others has to do with expanding vision. If I don’t share what I’m seeing, then my eyes wax dim. If I let out what I am letting in, like breathing, then my eyes wax brighter.

In this lifetime for me, so far, I have deeply let in and let out several things; Christianity, and being a missionary and teacher within that; a 23 year marriage; raising two daughters; and a 28 year entrepreneurial vision and effort at a contracting business; are the big ones that come in the moment. I needed to live through each of these stories, in real time, in order to feel and heal….in order to feel and heal some more, in order to, you guessed it, to feel and heal some more.

I deeply believe that what you have yet to see, and what I have yet to see, makes for an adventure that’s deeper than any adventure story we’ve ever read or seen in a movie. What you and I have yet to see is why we create and are drawn to stories.

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

Challenging The Part of You That Argues For Your Limitations

Published on by Jelelle AwenLeave a comment

“Argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they’re yours,”  Richard Bach

By Jillian Vriend

After more than ten years of serving people in various capacities and settings, I’ve heard many self-limiting arguments from a client when part of them is resisting a challenging growth phase in their process. Whether the challenge is coming from life in the form of a crisis or is self created by the choices they are making or is coming from an intuition or guidance offered by me; it can be very difficult for parts of us to allow us to move to our next tier of growth, even if we say initially that we really want to heal, change, and transform.

As a SoulFullHeart Guide, when I hear a justification from a SFH client for not doing journaling or for letting weeks go before scheduling the next session or for continuing medications and self defeating patterns and suffering loops that they’ve previously felt they needed to end, I think of the quote, “Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they’re yours.” From a soulfullheart perspective, I would change this to: “Become the part of you who argues for our limitations and, sure enough, that’s all you are.”

If you were working with us as a SFH Client and found yourself in a challenging phase, rather than trying to just shift or reframe your thinking or encourage you to modify your behavior, we would advocate that you identify the part of you that holds the resistance and is the “arguer for the limitations”. We’d have you ask this arguer part what they are afraid of if you continue to commit to your process; encourage you to negotiate with them by offering that even though you feel this part of you is resistant that you desire to heal and grow; and feel with this part how you can agree on a pace and timing that honors their feelings while still allowing movement forward.

You would feel how this part of you received arguments of limitations from your parents, family, and social conditioning. This negotiation through a dialogue with you (as your growing SoulFullHeart Self)  is what allows you space from the parts of you that are feeling shut down, overwhelmed, kicking out, and resistive. This also allows for space from possible unfelt mother and father projections that may be going on towards life, God, or your SFH Guide. If this previously resistive part is able to respond to the challenge, deeper levels of trust, respect, and leaning in are created from that part towards you, the new parent in the “house”, and future negotiations through difficult phases should be easier.

Basically, SFH offers that you need to show up to challenge yourself and parts of you about the limiting truths they hold about time constraints, lack of resources, inability to give up a medication or toxic relationship, etc. or you cannot move beyond their reality to experience the life that you most desire. A life where time and resources feel abundant; where what you previously related to as a medication no longer is being used to suppress your feelings, and where what previously felt daunting becomes an opportunity for growth and healing.

These movements can be supported by a SFH Guide challenging the arguments and justifications that you give and inviting you to connect with the part of you that is offering them in the way I’ve previously described. If the client cannot go there, then we trust that this just isn’t the time for them to go deeper into their process as their reality of not being available for it has become their only reality. It would be invasive for us to push deeper if there isn’t a “them” there, a growing centered and more mature version of themselves, to respond to the challenge.

Ultimately, what we most desire for people is a growing experience that they can challenge parts of themselves in a loving way that holds accountability while making the commitment of time, money, and energy to their process because it feels most self loving and nourishing to them to do so for their own growth and healing. When this is the ground of the exchange, they get to experience the possibilities that open up and the healing that happens when they become more emotionally conscious about the parts inside of them and how their undigested and unfelt reactions to life limit them from becoming who they were meant to be and living the life they really want.

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

Moving Beyond Compartments And Into The Flow

Published on by Jelelle Awen2 Comments

By Jillian Vriend

We are being offered an invitation to move beyond compartmentalization in our lives. The defensive aspects of our persona create compartments (both energetically and emotionally) to hold back love and desire from flowing into all areas of our lives. We may also compartmentalize our “work self” from the person that we are at home; or our public service persona from who we are in private; or our spiritual seeker from our practical side. I feel this is also what happens when people attend weekend or week long spiritual seminars, have a “peak experience”, and yet have difficulty integrating it into their daily lives long term. The experience and our authentic response to it has been put in a compartment by our defenses, waiting a time when it will feel safe to express this way again. In all of this compartmentalizing, we are essentially resistant to letting our natural essence arise and flow through every moment and in response to every situation in our lives.

The invitation from the Divine is that we can flow into life from our natural essence, on the current of love, and in every arising moment. This invitation is offered to us now….and now…..and now. It is our minds, our conditioning, our conforming to a linear-based culture, and, most of all, our fear of not having love and not being liked, that keeps us in these compartments. It is much easier to be rejected and feel shut out by people if we are only actually bringing a portion of ourselves (and a highly formed version) rather than our whole authentic and unpredictable selves!

An example of this from my past was when I worked as a business coach and manager during the work week and engaged in my spiritual/emotional passion calling on weekends and “off work times.” My authentic expression and true passion was reserved by my defenses to come out only when it felt safe for it to, when I was in group circles where everyone else was being this way, in an individual facilitation session, or when I was alone with my parts.

In the beginning, this compartmentalization was comfortable and actually not even conscious to me. I also compartmentalized my romantic relationship away from my spiritual/emotional work as my mate at the time didn’t accept and understand what I was engaged with. It felt easier to keep that side of myself contained off from him because whenever I brought it up we would fight and have conflict about it.

Yet, the more I opened my heart, my soul, and myself through the work that I was engaging in, the harder it became to just go to work in the office and separate that from my “personal life.” And also it became more painful and difficult to separate my romance from my deepening relationship with the Divine and the one with myself and my parts. Eventually, the love and desire were in overflow enough that it became possible to make the changes that I needed to in order to end the compartmentalization. This meant the end of the relationship, although it didn’t necessarily have to be that way if he had felt drawn to engage in the same healing process that I did (which he didn’t.) And, this also meant the eventual moving on to a full time focus on offering my spiritual and emotional healing gifts to others and out of business coaching.

These changes took tremendous courage and also lots of breathing space, time, love, and negotiating with and feeling of my defenses. As the compartments became fewer and fewer, the dam holding back my natural essence and love collapsed and an overflow of love, desire, passion, flooded into my life. This flood continues in this moment as a tendency to compartmentalize my life is moved through with a fresh flow of love from the Divine or in connection with Wayne or in an offering during a SoulFullHeart session where I am learning and growing, even as I am offering to others a way to respond to life and love.

My current guidance is to feel the painting contracting work that I am doing is as sacred as the healing work that I am offering. That the Jillian who holds a paint brush is the same as the one who is holding someone’s heart desires and fears.

And, I feel in embracing this offering that there is less resistance to working, more sweetness and enjoyment of it, and a sense of honoring and service that just is no matter what I am doing or engaged with. There is more surrender to trust love will flow and find its way, even through conflict and difficulty. There is more trust that the container of love that has no boundaries, limitations, or compartments!

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