For decades I have danced with the mental/behavioral health systems of the western world. I began talk therapy and dabbling in anti-depressants when I was in my 20's. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I am one of those people who is sensitive enough to feel the adverse side effects of a drug far sooner and stronger than the benefits. So I never lasted on any mind/mood altering medication for very long. Therefore I never had that magic pill to help me conform and function in a dysfunctional society.

Half a century later I still struggle to manage the depth and intensity of my emotional terrain, but I no longer pathologize it and diagnose it as depression or a "mood disorder". I now see it as my gift and burden of feeling what others around me repress. It is also the unspoken screams of a world that is suffering beyond its capacity or willingness to recognize or admit it. 

I now know that I become soul sick when I allow myself to be drawn into circumstances and environments that do not honor and value my creative and empathic gifts. That is when the symptoms of "mental Illness" rise up to get my attention. It is my BodyMind beseeching me to wake up and listen to what it is trying to tell me. And I do not get better when I try and suppress those cries for help. So as challenging as it may be to stay true to our inner calling, or even know that it is there at all, it is the only true salve for our suffering.

I am here to use my creative gifts to express the full depth and breadth of the human condition and this whole, dynamic, living system we are a part of. I am also here to use the creative and intuitive process to help others to discover the voice and vision within them. Together we matter. Together we can find the strength and compassion to keep showing up with open hearts. Separate we can become despondent and hopeless given the enormity of the world's problems.

So I offer this gentle reminder that we suffer from soul's that are sickened by the suffering of this world far more than we suffer from mental illness. Yes there are times when medical intervention can be of benefit, but do not drown out the deeper voice that is calling you to see what really ails us.

I have been shocked and appalled by the events and injustices happening in my country - the supposedly United States of America - in this last year. Now a new year has begun and it is time for me to take a deep look at where my energies are being spent and where they can be of the greatest service to conscious awakening.

As much as it would seem like helping people work through traumatic awakenings would be the obvious answer, I cannot ignore a deeper calling within me. It is my soul beseeching me to utilize my creative and empathic abilities to bring through whatever visual inspiration and uncensored messages that are relevant to what is unfolding on a much larger scale. I do not know where this will lead me, but I trust I am guided.

I have offered everything I have learned in the last 13 years about trauma and awakening here on these pages. I pray that it may assist you as it has helped me during my times of greatest struggle. I offer it for free, with love and gratitude for all the amazing teachers and divine experiences I have had. I offer it for free because we should not have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to learn this as I did, with all of my degrees and trainings. It is not the whole truth, but it is a piece of it that may help you, which many people have not found in their interactions with conventional treatments or even New Age modalities. 

I bid you farewell for now and deep blessings on your journey Home. May we meet in that field where there is no right or wrong and recognize each other as ourselves for the first and final time. If you are interested in exploring my artwork, online creative courses or personal support, please visit me at www.jeanetteamlie.com/.

Mitakuye Oyasin, Namasté, Amen ♡

After five years of helping to support transformation and conscious awakening here on Blue Earth Awakening with oodles of free resources, I am please to announce my new online school for Creative Awakening. It feels most auspicious for me to share this with you on this Full Blue Moon that is ripe with the fruition of long awaited dreams. 

Creative Awakening takes all of the transformational processes and trauma resolution here on BEA into a new domain of creative exploration and expression. THIS IS MY PASSION! And it is indeed time for me to share it with you. After a lifetime in the arts in a myriad of forms, followed by a decade of intensive training and personal experience in transformational counseling, trauma therapy and spiritual awakening, it is time to usher in a new era for my life's work.

In the School for Creative Awakening you will find free mini-courses as well as self-guided and facilitated courses that guide you into a personal exploration of the ways you have hidden your deepest creative impulses away in the dark recesses of your body and mind. What better than the spontaneous imagery of the right brain to help you go beyond the firewalls that your intellectual left brain constructed. This was all done for your safety and survival, and it obviously worked brilliantly if you are still here despite all you have been through. But somewhere in middle-life the kryptonite container starts developing pressure cracks and little bits of repressed inspiration starts to ooze out. It can be ooooooohhhhh so inconvenient in the midst of a well planned life, but my experience is that it will never be fully contained ever again.

So, let's go have some fun spelunking in the recesses of our unconscious body/mind and find out what really makes us tick and inspires us to live life like we really meant to be here. Okay?!? So follow me to.........

Creative Awakening and let the real Journey begin!!!

♡ Jeanette

What is it that makes us reach through the pain and despair of our circumstances toward the light? How is it that so many people, despite all odds to the contrary, find a way to heal after trials and traumas? I was so moved when one of my therapists once told me how amazed she was at my determination to heal and face anything that blocked my path. She marveled at this impulse within us to find our way to the light. And her seeing this in me helped me appreciate it in myself.

We live in an amazing time with brilliant people discovering such profound epiphanies about how our minds, bodies & souls work. One of these discoveries of the last decade that may be of greater importance than we realize is the growing awareness of something referred to as 'Developmental Trauma'. This is not the sudden, unexpected incident that rocks you to the core. Nor is it the horror that any combat soldier faces. Rather it is the subtle, chronic condition of being neglected, un-cared for or chastised for being who we are when that doesn't fit the norm. It can even occur when being birthed by a mother who has received the standard drugs of the era, which prevent her from creating the initial bond that attunes us to the amazing rhythm of the human heart.

Yes it can also occur from outright abuse, but what few have realized until now is that many of the sensitive and creative souls who march to the beat of a different drum often show significant signs of developmental trauma later in life. Fortunately our souls eventually strive to break through the repressive barriers that conditioned us when we were young to hide ourselves in the dark. Eventually some crisis or inspiration calls us to face the often unrecognized force of misplaced shame and guilt, and bring it to the light for forgiveness and healing.

This what Blue Earth Awakening and Creative Awakening are all about.....helping sensitive & creative souls to discover the brilliance that dwells within us all. Let our hearts awaken the potential within us that is ready to push through the fecund soil of our inner garden and find its way to the light of consciousness, where it can bloom for all to see!

We will never be free of our identification with the body as long as we are afraid of the body. We must learn how to be in the body but not of the body in order to fully awaken during our incarnation.

Early life conditions that generate developmental and complex trauma tend to encourage the child to disassociate from the body because of distressing sensations that are not being attended to by our caregivers, for whatever reason. This causes the conscious Soul to not fully embody and identify with the body totally. Over the years the pressure from this internal conflict of not feeling comfortable in our own skin compels many people to pursue spiritual practices that achieve altered, expanded and disembodied states of consciousness.

Trauma therapy sees this state as dissociation and seeks to help the individual become re-identified and grounded within the body in order to live a “normal” life. Spiritual practices seek to help the conscious Soul to realize that it is not a body and to regain the natural state of oneness with All That Is. Yet spiritual practices often fail to understand that as long as a being is afraid of their body they will never be able to totally dis-identify with it and will likely experience extreme vacillations between expanded and collapsed states.

Through directed self awareness I have been able to witness that a similar state of expansion happens with both dissociation and awakening, the difference being whether it is prompted by fear or relaxation. So the goal then is not to eliminate the expanded state, but rather to uncouple it from the fear that was the early catalyst for it arising in the first place.

So what if the very experience of early life trauma primes the incarnated Soul for potential awakening? What if we have a greater proclivity for conscious awakening IF we are able to uncouple the experience from the survival fear that initiated it in the first place. In some instances it is facing the fear of imminent death that finally and potentially permanently breaks the link between consciousness and the survival/fear response. So then, our ability to learn to calmly witness our somatic sensations, including dissociation, without judging them or getting lost in them is the doorway to uncoupling them from the fear that fuels the egoic cycles of expansion and collapse, thereby facilitating our conscious awakening. Then we truly can be in the body, but not of the body.

Sharing an incredible free resource to assist you in rewiring your brain to help your mind awaken. This is profoundly practical and effective information and processes that anyone can do, from a total novice to someone with decades of spiritual and awakening experience. Rick Hansen combines the revolutionary breakthroughs of current neuroscience and combines it with spiritual principles to offer a simple process that can assist any of us in discovering the peace, vitality and purpose within us. 

The link below offers a series of simple meditations that you can utilize along with any other form of practice or exploration you may already be doing. This is especially useful for anyone who has suffered trauma and negative conditioning, especially developmental trauma from adverse early life conditions, because the tendency is for the nervous system and brain to get stuck in a negative feedback loop. All you have to do is try one of these meditations to immediately feel a shift toward greater wellbeing.

Rick will also be offering a new online course that will guide you on this healing journey beginning in October of 2014. It is a year long commitment, but it is offered for only $25/month, so he is really intending for it to be available to pretty much anyone who really wants to heal and grow and transform. And it comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. For more information visit http://www.rickhanson.net/teaching/foundations-program/.

"The spontaneous movement in all of us is toward connection. No matter how withdrawn and isolating we have become or how serious the trauma we have experienced, on the deepest level, just as a plant spontaneously moves towards the sun, there is in each of us an impulse moving toward connection." ~ Laurence Heller and Aline LaPierre in 'Healing Developmental Trauma'

This is a relatively new book and area of research that explores the ambiguous territory of developmental trauma, which can range from obvious abuse to the subtleties of not being seen and nurtured in our earliest years of life. Although the book is fairly clinical, it is readable by most people who have a sincere interest in learning why, after years of talk therapy, alternative therapies, spiritual practices and sincere self-help efforts, they remain highly reactive in relationships and other life circumstances.

This is a valuable resource for those who have not found answers to their questions about complex trauma and PTSD that doesn't have one or a few identifiable critical experiences that seemingly caused the trauma response. It is a welcome guide through the murky waters of relational trauma that haunts so many Americans today. More information is also available at http://www.drlaurenceheller.com/books.html.