Excerpts from Soul Befriending

Excerpts from Introduction to Soul Befriending by Rosalie Deer Heart

I wrote this book to remind you that you have a choice about which story you choose to star in: your limited personal story that is grounded in coping and surviving or your expanded soul story that is centered on transforming, being authentic and embodying spaciousness.

No matter how immersed someone is in their limited personal story, I know a larger soul story co-exists that highlights soul purpose, life lessons, healing potential, creative self-expression, and meaningful service. I have enjoyed doing soul readings for more than thirty-five years, which is half of my life! When I was a psychotherapist, I listened for a person’s soul purpose and soul agreements, because I knew intuitively that was the key to their empowerment, fulfillment and healing.

Writing this book reminded me of playing hopscotch as a little girl. Sometimes I wrote about having one foot in personal story and one foot in soul story. Other times I clearly had both feet in personal story. In the final two chapters, I landed with both feet in soul story. However, my own journey was not that easy or organized.

I ask a lot of you as a reader. I also asked a lot of myself as I learned how to negotiate the different needs, motivations and rewards of my personal story and my soul story. Each chapter contains personal stories, principles, examples, dreams, and channeling as well as invitations to discover and explore your ongoing story as well as your history.

The first step is awareness. Once we remember how to track our awareness we can appreciate that we are always at a choice point between the two stories. Since life is purposeful, we can then move on and track our motivations and habits of mind and heart that determine which version of our story brings us meaning and fulfillment.

Soul Befriending is an invitation to embody your spiritual legacy as well as your human story. I believe that each of us carries a template or imprint of our soul agreements. We each have specific gifts and talents that only we can embody for the highest good of all. The time is now. We are here. All is ready. Even you!

Leave your GPS behind. Growth happens at the intersections between what we don’t know and what we are willing to encounter. Be prepared to question all of your beliefs, especially the ones you cherish the most deeply. When you align with your soul, you may discover delight. Be open to possibilities and synchronicities. Act as if you are already neck-deep in grace. You may experience time differently. It may appear to be more fluid and present time may blend and merge with past time or flow into future time. Your guides may invite you to play and transform guidance into wisdom. God may seize you.

Count on me as your travel guide to remind you to love yourself, your life, and all that you attract. Both love and compassion carry a higher frequency than fear, blame, guilt and shame. Love without exceptions. Love is the radiant, transformative energy that connects us with all that is. Join me in adopting an evolutionary affirmation: “I am love loving.” Enjoy being open to how your life transforms.

The earth awaits. Evolution awaits. If you are ready to experience your own evolutionary transformation and add to the expanded consciousness of our world and planet, welcome to your ever-evolving, co-creative story.

Excerpts from Chapter One: Personal Story or Soul Story?

I believe that each of us was born magnificent and as we grew up, we dimmed our light and settled for mediocrity. Together we can end the trance of our learned limitations and personal history and choose to align with our expanded soul story. Remember your soul story is forever your context even when your personal story appears to be the one you are more comfortable starring in and repeating to others. The questions to ask yourself to determine whether you are engaging in your personal story or your soul story are always the same:

• What do I see?
• How deeply do I allow myself to see?
• What don’t I see?
• Where is the presence of love?

Excerpts from Chapter Three: Releasing Resistance and Claiming Freedom

To disentangle from your personal story and your small self, practice redirecting your energy by choosing to stop complaining, comparing, gossiping, blaming and withholding forgiveness.

Your capacity to let go of your prejudices, beliefs, control and feelings unconditionally determines how free you are. “Most people prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty,” says Virginia Satir, author of PeopleMaking. Please be aware that there is always a part of us that wants to avoid having a revelation, because we will then be orphans to our own history.

• What emotion is your biggest obstacle to breaking free of your personal story?
• What important feelings are you not letting into your awareness? (Hint! Consider feelings that you might judge as not okay, for example, anger, jealousy and sadness.)
• Where in your life are you not telling the truth?
• Where in your life have you not kept your promises?
• In my relationship with ______, what do I need to say or do to feel complete and whole?

Excerpts From Chapter Seven: Befriending Intuition

Meeting Big Angel

The circumstances surrounding my initial encounter with Big Angel were humorous. Picture this scene. I was in the middle of giving a workshop on Soul Empowerment at Leapin Lizard’s, a metaphysical bookstore in Portland, Maine and I took a bathroom break.

You may not wish to picture me sitting on the toilet but that is when Big Angel announced his name and his presence to me. I distinctly heard a voice and it was definitely male. I rushed to pull my pants up while he asked for my permission to teach the group about how to align with future self. I was attached to introducing the new concepts that I had been working with for several months, but I took a deep breath and thought to myself, “Ah! An angel with an agenda.”

Then I remembered that all the angels I have met had an agenda. My curiosity overcame my insistence on leading the exercise myself. When Big Angel asked to merge with my human energies in order to lead the exercise, I agreed.

I recognized the quickening of my energy and the lightness in my head as a sign of an angel’s arrival because I remembered channeling The Angel of Findhorn during the fifteenth anniversary party in Forres, Scotland. I joked to friends that I was becoming the queen of surrender. Allowing another to occupy my consciousness and my body felt like the ultimate challenge. However, learning how to express in linear words the Big, Bold, Beautiful and Bright Truths that Big Angel channeled through me felt even bigger.

Although I was aware that my energy felt quickened, my cheeks were flushed, and I felt like I was having a hot flash from inside out, none of the participants guessed Big Angel was their instructor. Perhaps because Big Angel had merged into my high heart, I looked normal. He remained invisible. My mouth opened and Big Angel and I walked the participants through the multi-dimensional exercise. Although I spoke the words that led the participants through the merging with future-self exercise, I was in awe of the simple yet profound process. It was way beyond what I had experienced personally or prepared for the group.

Over time, I discovered that one way to play with the angels was to embrace my radiance. High beam living and loving is how I source and express my authentic power and align with the Divine.

Angels are our allies and they have no understanding of our human tendency to settle for survival rather than fully flourishing. At all times they mirror our divinity and invite us to open to our divine potential. They excel at reflecting a future memory of being all that we can be, which includes the unfolding and claiming of our divine potential which brings boundless joy to them.

Excerpts From Chapter Eight: Befriending Creativity

If you were conditioned to believe that you have to get your life in order before you express yourself creatively, I suggest that you banish that belief because you may be setting yourself up for not expressing yourself at all. Too many of us were raised with this restricting belief: work before play.

I know from experience that when I become too busy or when I stray too far from my imagination, I cut myself off from my soul’s story. Furthermore, I have observed that people who describe themselves as creative tend to fall into depression more than others who do not value their unique form of creative expression.

Creative inspiration visits when I embody some form of creativity, and depression is a signal that my spirit suffers from creative ennui. For me, embodying my creativity is a basic need, as essential as fresh water, nutritious food and collaborative sex. That is why I indulge in at least one form of creative expression each day. Writing, doing soul readings, designing workshops, sculpting and being with my grandchildren are all synonyms for creativity for me.

Here are some questions designed to jump-start your unique form of creative self expression:

• What did you learn from your parents and grandparents about limiting or expanding your unique form of creative self-expression?
• Who were your models for creativity in childhood?
• In what ways was your self-expression thwarted as a child?
• In what ways did you protect your parents by toning down your self-expression?
• In what ways are you still influenced by that decision to tone down?
• What does your soul yearn to express?

Excerpts From Chapter Nine: Listen To Your Life For Your Soul Story

Your soul will always invite you deeper into yourself as it challenges your personality’s beliefs about self, others and the world. Opening up to experience other possibilities and new levels of freedom, creativity, prosperity and wellbeing connects us with our spacious, multi-dimensional selves. Soul also reassures us that nothing in our past limits our future.

The essential question soul asks is: Who would you have to become to sustain a bigger life in order to bring deeper meaning to your experience? Seldom is the complete journey outlined in advance. Entering the mystery of soul story requires that you take the first step without knowing in advance what more will be asked of you. It is a dance between what is revealed and what is concealed. Full faith is required, because a soul call may bring your entire life into question. Think of a soul call as an invitation that will not go away.

Authenticity and integrity are foundations for soul story. Think about authentic power as the human experience without the limitations of fear, self-doubt and self-hatred. Power includes the ability to see our selves clearly, to trust our instincts, and manifest our potential. Stepping into and owning your power is also acknowledging what triggers you into reactive behaviors. In other words, authentic power is the alignment of your personality with your soul.

Excerpts From Chapter Eleven: The Cobwebbing Power of Destiny Threads

I understand on an intuitive level that the process of our dying is either a further magnification or merging with our soul story or a grasping to our personal story. It is an epic process, like birth. Some choose to struggle in their personal drama; others choose to merge with their eternal nature.

Source Code is an energetic pattern that bridges our consciousness to the next dimension. The light body carries the scintillating energy of our personal Source Code. Source Codes are as unique as soul purpose. Furthermore, I am learning or re-learning that attaching to human themes of revenge, competition, fear and control can slow down the process of recalling Source Code because the energy field is lowered and the dimming of our light results in scrambledness rather than coherence.

When our ego is in control during dying time, there is fear and holding on to one’s personal story. Ego believes that all is lost at death. Therefore, ego is unwilling to merge with Source Code. People familiar with their source Code recognize that dying is a co-creative process. People familiar with their Source Code surrender. People familiar with their Source Code do not fear dying. I believe that Steve Jobs was connected to his Source Code and his soul story as he approached death and exclaimed: “Wow! Wow! Wow!”

I appreciate that I am not the first to write about how we are all awakening to our mystical natures. When I began thinking about this book twenty-two months ago, I did not anticipate ending this book with musing about mysticism. I smile as I acknowledge that God often rests in the surprises. The paradox is that mysticism has been working me since I began journal-keeping forty years ago.

Here’s how I know:

• I look for unity and recognize intuitively the interconnection of all: people, plants, animals, earth and space.
• I commit to at least one consistent, daily spiritual practice.
• I live in the emerging paradox and participate in the mystery – both the suffering and the joy.
• I appreciate that to be more present in the world means making more room for the world to be present in me.
• I embody an altered appreciation of time and space.
• I embrace simplicity amidst the complexity of daily living.
• I am learning how to embody surrender, non-attachment and compassionate action.
• I am learning about humility and adoration.
• I am learning that goodness is part of God’s heart and one of the secrets of life.
• I envision the future and appreciate the present moment.

Remember that you are the only person who can be a visionary for your own life. I passionately believe that as we give ourselves permission to fully flourish by connecting to our authentic Selves, we recognize that we are not only more than who we ever imagined, but we are even more vast than we are capable of imagining.

Each of us will leave a legacy of love consciousness for future generations. As you claim your entitlement to live even more fully into your emerging soul story, please appreciate that it is your authentic self that empowers and protects you — not the defenses of your ego. As we are touched by the Divine and realize our vast potential, we incorporate the beliefs that have served us in the past. Evolution erupts and expands when we reach out beyond who we think we are capable of and discover entirely new ways of being, creating and relating. From the sacred space of our soul story, we invite others, dreams, creativity, joy-filled service, and God to inform us.