Jeanne Marie Ketchel
Channeled by Jan Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Do you have a message of guidance for us today, as this week rolls now into the energy of a weekend? Will things slow down? Or is the energy going to continue to challenge us?

The energy has only just begun to challenge you, My Dears. Now will it offer you many possibilities in which to focus your intentions and your attention. It will now offer reflection, deflection, and introspection as possibilities. By this, I mean that it is the time of the mirror, the energy of mirroring and looking at the past, the present, and the future. You may experience one of these aspects, or all three, separately and simultaneously. This is a very complicated energy system that now comes to greet you and that will present you with the complications of the inner self, many of which need pondering.

Hold a mirror up to your self, as you go into this energy. Carry it with you at all times. I mean this metaphorically, but if you wish to carry a real mirror in your pocket, that is quite suitable too. Offer your self a peek in this mirror as you encounter your areas of weakness, of challenge, and of attachment. By looking at the self in positions of recapitulation and retrospection, so can you use the mirror as a magic mirror to look deeper into your past. Look beyond just the face you see. What else was happening in your past that you could not see then, but will now? For the mirror holds the whole story and is willing to reveal the hidden secrets, if you care to go looking. This involves deep reflective, introspective work and looking beyond the ideas of the self of the past, tilting the mirror slightly to get a different picture.

Who are you now? Who were you then? You are different now, yet are you still drawn to recapitulate some aspect of the old self, long forgotten or unfinished. Look deeply into the mirror of the old self from your present self, with all the knowledge you now hold about how life unfolded after that memory. Find out what the old self wants to know, and act as intermediary, as the evolved mature one who carries as many secrets as the mirror holds. This will be the challenge of part of the energy of the mirror as you are pulled back in retrospection of places of old; to memories, to unfinished business, or to unclear moments, as yet unresolved in your psyche, but also perhaps in your present reality as well. This energy will assist you in gaining clarity, if you use your mirror to remain present in now, grounding your self with your own face of now, even as you look beyond it to see what the mirror holds.

That is retrospection of the past, remaining grounded in the present, yet able to observe, feel, and integrate the past from a new perspective, fully accepting it with the knowledge you have gained as life has unfolded.

Your mirror is also a good tool for deflecting energy, for learning detachment, and to ward off evil energy, or energy of bad intent. Disturbances in your energy field that come from outside sources, that are neither conducive to nor necessary for your growth process, may be successfully deflected by use of your mirror. Use it as a shield to bounce negative or parasitic energy off you. This type of energy will become known to you by your study of it, as it appears in your mirror.

You can use your mirror to look over your shoulders, to see what is approaching, to study energy and people around you, to give yourself time to prepare for what is to come. You may use your mirror quite effectively in this manner if you stay grounded in your present adult self and maintain your awareness of who you are now, of what feels right, and of what feels resonant, based on your adult knowing self. Use the mirror to prepare your self for outside energy that comes seeking to disrupt you and topple you from your balanced place of confidence.

We talked greatly about the balance of self the other day. As you practice it, learning to maintain it, so can you use your powerful mirror to warn you and suggest to you that it is time to be protective of that steady and balanced self. Your efforts to remain balanced must be maintained now as you enter this energy time, as you step into the time of the mirror.

So, use the mirror to protect your energy. Do not use it blatantly and haphazardly though. You must always use it accompanied by deep inner work, deep retrospection, and introspective processing, guided by who you are now, always staying in the present, even as you view your past and observe what is approaching you now.

The mirror may also catch a glimpse of your future. For as you view your secrets, your revelations, your energetic challenges, so may you also get a gleam of brightness, a blinding flash of possibility, as yet unknown, but with quite a powerful and substantial feel to it. You may experience a surge of creative energy during this mirroring time. You may find your self intellectually stimulated and spiritually reawakened, as that gleam of brightness flashes in your eyes, jolting you into alertness. You can use this aspect of the mirror whenever you need it too, by your own hand and your own intent. Simply catch the light to jolt you out of places where you are caught, where you slumber too long, or where clarity is not achieved. Use the power of the mirror in this way to reposition yourself in your balanced present state, reminding yourself to return to your adult self.

Also, do not hesitate to look at others around you in your mirror. Look at them standing beside you in your mirror and study what it is about them that you also hold. Why are they in your life? The mirror holds the secret there as well. In relationships do we seek some aspect of self. What aspect of self do you admire in your partner or friend? What aspect of self do you abhor? What aspect of self do you desire in that person, who also seeks the same in you? You see, your little pocket mirror is quite a worthy tool for a warrior to learn the uses of, is it not?

Now is both a crumbling down time and a building up time. It is a shattering apart time and a piecing together time. It is a time of breaking patterns and destroying illusions, while, at the same time, of strengthening possibilities, and choosing to proceed in new manners. By choosing new methods of working through your issues, and by answering your questions with deep reflective, introspective work, may you succeed in deflecting the old patterns of behavior from continuing to attach to you, while you simultaneously offer your self new ideas, new paths, and new opportunities for growth.

Look into the mirror of self and find a new self, a deeper self, an endless self, who is waiting to be discovered, waiting to be invited out of the mirror, waiting to join you on the journey, waiting to merge with you, as you resolve your past, accept your present, and acquiesce to your future, fully aware and ready for adventure.

Jeanne Marie Ketchel
Channeled by Jan Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
What guidance do you have for us today?

I must congratulate you all on your efforts to maintain balance in your lives. This is what you must continue to focus on, no matter what comes to greet you from inside or outside. Your ability to straddle your worlds, with perfectly balanced footing, yet still able to flow well in either world, unafraid, is your ultimate goal. Along with that, your challenge is to remain aware, and this may perhaps be even more challenging. Awareness is the challenge that you must hone and take with you into the worlds that you experience now, while in human form, and later when you transition into new life.

To maintain balance at all times may seem impossible. You may find your self feeling imperfect in your attempts to maintain stability, focus, and clarity. Do not, however, chide the self, nor attach frustration or blame to the process you must undergo. Your feelings of imperfection are but struggles that must be encountered. Look upon them as challenges, as openings to events of recapitulation, or steps in learning your greater challenge of awareness.

I do not like to see you caught in struggles with your self over who will have control, remaining in battle without first gaining some insight, even if it be the insight that: “Oh dear, here I am again, caught in the same battle with myself. Why am I here again? I must have something still to learn. What can it be?”

Asking these questions is recognizing the self in the process and, no matter what place you inhabit in the process, acknowledging that it is meaningful and necessary. Your next step toward training your awareness becomes to go beyond the questions of why and what, to look around you and see what it is in your world that has gotten you to this place now. For even if you have been presented with the same battle over and over again, each time you enter into that battle, familiar though it may be, it is actually being triggered by something in your environment of now. So, what in your life, now, is signaling your place of work, your issues that need attention, and your process?

To look upon life as a process of self discovery and growth, as well as participation in the outer world, each equally necessary and available, while learning detachment from both of them in order to evolve, is your ultimate goal. You see? You must fully live every aspect of the self, every aspect of life upon that earth, with all who you must encounter, even your inner people, before you can evolve to new life. Encounters with the inner aspects of self are perhaps the greatest challenges and this is what I seek to aid you with. For the inner selves are quite well-hidden and trained to keep you on your toes, urging you to confront what you must. Perhaps an inner self now urges you to go into deep depression or contemplation of some aspect of self that is dark, unnerving, shameful, uncomfortable to take into consideration? Perhaps you resist this aspect that must be encountered in order to grow? Perhaps you prefer to by-pass it, ignore it, or step on it, to keep it quiet in one fashion or another? Well, in so doing will your balance be tilted, unseated, and pushed off kilter. Am I right?

As you attempt to push away what comes to you in your growth process, perhaps because it is so difficult to consider, so do you interrupt and disturb the natural flow of your process, as it desires to unfold. Then you get into your battles of resistance and the whole thing falls into quite a mess. I know the process well. But I also know the process from the warrior’s point of view, and that is what I seek to teach you about.

Now be mindful, when I speak of the warrior self, I do not attach to any conventional or unconventional practice or religion. In fact, the warrior’s process involves you alone, what you are presented with, and how your life greets you with what you need to learn, regardless of religion or affiliation of beliefs. I speak of life itself showing you what it means to become a warrior. Your most enabling task is to learn balance, the warrior’s stable stance, a foot in one world, and the other foot in another. Whatever those worlds may be in your life, and they may shift many times throughout the day, so must you learn to hold your self in a good, firmly grounded stance, no matter what comes to shake you from your foundations, to scare you into submissiveness, or to force you to consider other options.

There are no other options. Your balance is necessary. Do not ever think that this is of no consequence, or that you can evolve through that lifetime without the balance of a warrior. Without it you will float through life, but you will not evolve. You will not truly face your challenges, for how could you without your feet planted firmly? Your challenges would simply blow you away with a mere puff of air. Is that what you want? Is that how you foresee your self, an unstable individual? I do not think you do, My Dears. And if you do, for even a moment (or longer), perhaps that is where you must go. Perhaps you must evaluate the self who is struggling to find the balanced stance of the warrior self. You see, nothing is ever a wrong perception, or a misguided directive.

Every aspect of life is a valuable lesson. But your questions must be based on growth, with balance. They must be based on your process, with awareness of future evolution, and on gaining clarity of who you are and for what reason you exist, in order to become the warrior that you are fully capable of becoming now, in this lifetime.

I know I present you with a lot of ideas to contemplate. But today, on this first day of your new President Obama’s life as your taskmaster, as he presents you all with challenges, so must you all learn to balance your selves. This entails inner/outer work; child/adult balance; crybaby/maternal balance; weakling/paternal balance; sordid/beautiful balance, and so on, and so on. It is quite a task! But as you undertake it, you will begin to feel what it means to be in balance, to stay in balance, and eventually to shift into your balanced warrior state upon a second’s notice. You might also find that you are naturally there more often than not, because it feels so right, so natural, and so proper for you to be there.

Wherever you are in your process, I ask this of you, as I conclude for today: Slow Down! Slow down your frustration. Slow down your desire to grow, to jump ahead, to have it done. You must take each step of your journey in order to reach your goal. It is the journey that teaches. The goal is but an enigma, because you do not know what the goal is, what the prize is, until you have taken the journey. You may have an idea of what it is, but I can guarantee you that it does not exist, for you are not yet who you will be, so how can your goal be already present to greet you. You would find it not quite fulfilling when you got there if you hold it too closely to your heart, for, ultimately, your goal is to learn detachment in order to be totally open for a new journey ahead, beyond anything you can now imagine, in this life and the next.

So, My Dear Ones, the question of balance remains always present to remind you to ground your self in the reality of life, the place where your lessons are presented, and your tasks laid out before you. In balanced awareness will you be able to process and progress. Good Luck!

NOTE: I just wanted to mention that Jeanne has, in a previous message, spoken about gaining balance through physical movement. I will try to find the reference later and I’ll post it under Guidance. So look for it there, probably titled, Balancing Act, or something like that. In the meantime, if you are a yoga practitioner, any of the balancing poses are really good for feeling your balance and for strengthening your ability to shift into balance whenever you need it. (i.e.: tree pose, triangle, even mountain, to name but a few off the top of my head.) -Jan