#607 A Journeyer Understands Consequences of Actions

Jeanne Marie Ketchel
Channeled by Jan Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
What are you going to talk about today?

Today is a good day to talk about the consequences of actions taken.

What do you mean by that?

By this I mean that one must be ready to take full responsibility for making a decision and acting upon it in order to grow. Maturity is not simply achieved by state of age or position in life. One must earn it by accepting full responsibility for the self and the consequences of one’s actions.

Only in learning the lessons of being responsible may you truly evolve into a mature person, by owning the fact that you alone are to blame for the unfolding of your life, by the choices made, whether conscious or unconscious. By using the word blame I do not do so in a judgmental manner, but as a fact of life that all choices eventually trickle back to the person who has enacted them. All choices must be seen as actions taken by the unknown self to guide you to your issues and challenges.

There is no blame, regret, or denial that will absolve you of your need to grow. You see? Every step in your life is of great consequence. Every action taken and every choice you make is a true fact of your life. Each step you take leads you where you need to go, whether others are involved or not. By making these statements regarding ownership of action, I wish to entice you to a greater acceptance of the self as a journeyer.

A journeyer accepts every tiny step along the journey simply because he knows that he has elected to take a journey and that a journey entails adventure. It entails meeting, conflict, taking chances, using quick thinking, wittiness, sharpness, and decision making, often without much time for forethought. A journeyer knows that all actions will have consequences. As he travels he knows that he has only himself to rely on and that if he fails he has only himself to blame. As I stated, such blame is without judgment; it is simply a fact.

As a journeyer travels his path he knows that he is responsible for every action, yet he also knows that each step opens him to new opportunities and new adventures bearing new choices. A journeyer leads a life of action. In taking full responsibility for himself, and each action, he also must learn to accept full responsibility for the consequences of each step and each action taken. This is a process that may take some time to fully embrace and own, but all must do so in order to evolve.

In accepting the self as a true journeyer, life becomes an adventure of hope, of options, of self-determination to fully take the journey that will lead to wholeness of self in the outer world and in the inner world. Today I speak of learning what it means to take full responsibility for decisions acted upon.

I suggest that consequences be assessed and that outcomes be satisfactory to the evolving self. Many decisions are made in fear. In fact, most decisions have fear hovering in the background somewhere, so that often they are not made based on inner truth, but on outer realities that are so far removed from inner knowing that they have no connection whatsoever to a spiritually evolving life.

Take the consequences of the decision to go to war, for instance. This involves the potential to kill and be killed. Is such a decision based in spiritual evolutionary awareness and tactics, based in the truth of energy, in the truth of energetic sameness of all beings? No, it is not. Treat all of your decisions as if you were deciding whether or not to go to war. Is the war worth it? Is the choice made going to lead to more war? Is the choice you are attempting to make based on the fact that you are an energetic being living a life of spiritual growth?

Think first: I am energy. Then decide: What is the best move to make for an energy being who is seeking fulfillment of this life being lived now? Perhaps your perspective on your life situation may change as you allow your inner work to become part of every decision you make. Perhaps your choices may begin to be based in mature thinking, knowing that you are choosing to lead your life along an evolutionary path. Perhaps your journey may begin to lose some of the old fears as you accept each challenge in your life as perfectly set up for you to make a choice that will further move you along your evolutionary path.

Consider your choices based on your past, but also on your future. Consider your choices based on your immediate place in life as well. Consider your choices as a maturing energy being, fully responsible for your life. Determine, each day, what you would like that life to look like. Consider your actions and ask the self: What am I offering my self today by making this decision to proceed along my path in this manner? Is there another option that is better for my evolving spirit self? Am I ready to own my choices, to be fully responsible for the consequences of my decisions? Am I making my choice based on fear and hearsay, based on truth or lies, based on heart or head? What is the truth of the reality I live in, and where is the best place to go next in my life? What are the inevitable, known consequences of my decisions, and am I ready to own those as well?

Turn inward and ask the mature self to meet the adventuring spirit self each day in balance, in action, in taking responsibility, and in growing. This is all you need to develop an understanding of your life as it has thus far been lived and as it has yet to be known. Good Luck as you take your next step, My Evolutionary Beings!

#606 The Mystery & Magic of Intent

Jeanne Marie Ketchel
Channeled by Jan Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
I had a hard time falling asleep last night and in an attempt to settle my thoughts I focused on setting a dreaming intent. Eventually, I fell asleep and dreamed about intent itself. Carlos Castaneda came into my dream and explained that the idea of setting an intent becomes like a tent that gets in the way of accessing intent, telling me that I must leave my fear of intent behind in order to access intent. He showed me a magical pass to push away my “tent of intent,” first to the left, then to the right in order to access the true energy of intent. He said: “You must leave intent behind so you can go forward into intent.” I take this to mean that by focusing so intently on setting an intent I am in fact blocking access to the energy of intent, which I understand already exists. How do we set an intent to access intent without getting stuck in the asking? How do we simply allow ourselves to be open to the magic and adventure of our lives without trying to control what we get?

My Dear One, though one is often fearful during a lifetime the greatest gift one can give the self is the gift of innocence. This involves allowing the self to be vulnerable, open to that which comes, yet also open to that which cannot come into one’s life if one does not allow the self to be vulnerable.

If you, My Dear Readers, are interested in growing you must allow access to the innocent and vulnerable self, the soft self, the ethereal self. This self is many-faceted. This self is complex. This self is most necessary to understand and tend to, to expose to the self, fully, in order to access the greater adventure of a meaningful life.

When you, My Dear Jan, set an intent for a specific event you are limiting your access to the adventure of your life. Though I do not dismiss such activity, I do suggest that such step-by-step intent to grow does not allow for true intent to freely guide you. Your dreams of evolution and growth will only manifest to a certain point if you consciously set them before you. However, if you remove all goals and all ideas of where you want to be in your life, where you think you should be, what you deserve, desire, and conceive as necessary for your life and instead open to the adventure of your life then you will truly be open to intent.

Intent is not tied to you or to anyone else. Intent is the possibility of everything in existence, available without attachment to outcome, fully available if you are freed of control as far as the process is concerned.

There is no process that you can truly come up with to access intent, for a process implies control. The only thing I can suggest is that you allow the self to trust that your life’s unfolding is the only process and guidance you need. For example Jan, your process in searching for answers leads you on your unfolding journey, but you have learned that in order to take that journey you have had to shed your many cloaks, or tents of intent, your controlling intentions to be safe and fully in command of your life, living a predictable life in a prescribed manner until you dared to access the yearnings of the inner self most deeply. You began to access the energy of intent upon opening the door to recapitulation, allowing the mysteries of your life to become clear and known. In accepting the mysteries of the self, allowing for the vulnerable self to become known and acceptable, one is available to experience life on a new level.

I find that recapitulation is a lifelong process, that only in continually questioning my motives for all my actions do I discover what my life is all about.

Recapitulation means not only recapturing the past, reliving it, and acquiescing to the facts of it, but it also means resolving all self-imposed rules, regulations, and controls so that recapitulation leads to detachment and truly being available to the energy of growth, which is intent. Intent is the energy that an evolutionary journey is fueled by. It is not created by you nor by your innermost desires. It is simply available and in order to access it you must also be available. This is why inner work is so important. Without inner work and truthful exposure of the self, to the self, your wounded self will not heal, but simply be left in a state of protection, unavailable because of your intent to remain in control of your innocence.

Your innocence, My Dear Ones, is your key to life and to accessing the evolutionary energy of intent. Do not be afraid to discover what your innocence truly means to you. Do not be afraid to discover your vulnerabilities. Do not be afraid to expose the self to the magic of your evolutionary journey.

If there is a process to engage it is the process of evolution and growth. Utilize your own life, each moment of your personal life, as part of that process so that you may allow the self the freedom to be open to the energy of intent and for life to evolve as it should.

When you speak of there being no real process to accessing intent, except being open to it, my first reaction is that to get to that place one must adopt many processes. Can you explain what you mean by this, in greater detail?

I do not mean to imply that a life is not a process nor that many processes are not undertaken in order to evolve. However, once one has evolved to the point of understanding that such a thing as intent exists, one must then be available to the energy of intent by becoming open, vulnerable, and innocent, with no intent except to be open to a life of fulfillment, simply open to it.

This will certainly entail utilizing many processes and, as you yourself describe in your dream, a process of acquiescence without intent, otherwise your outcome would be predictable. You see, intent is not attached to prediction or outcome. It is merely opening to the possibility of everything, without attachment to anything in particular.

Are you truly ready to take the adventure of your life? That is what you must acquiesce to in order to access intent. The greater energy of intent is, My Dears, working at all times, and this is its greatest secret. It is working for you at all times, without your acquiescence, your control, or your permission. It is always present, available, and in action, yet do you refuse it simply by your habitual responses to it.

Respond to it differently, without placing attention on its powers, simply by breaking your old patterns of thoughts, behaviors, and ideas of the self. You are an evolving being, aided by intent, whether you are aware of it or not. Wouldn’t you rather be aware or it? Wouldn’t you rather be available to flow with the energy of it, unafraid of it, simply because you know, by the truth of your life thus far lived, that you are not in control, that something else is urging you to take the adventure of this lifetime to the fullest? Are you ready to acquiesce to true life?

I leave you today with the thought that a life’s unfolding process is all you need to discover your personal reality. Study the self. Acquiesce to the journey of your life, with maturity and innocence walking hand in hand.

#605 Chuck’s Place: THE BIG BABY: A Shamanic Explanation

Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences! Many of the shamanic and psychological terms used in Chuck’s essays are defined in Tools & Definitions on our Psychotherapy website.

The good news is this: when shamans view the energetic state of human beings they see the big baby as an inevitable consequence of our human predicament. In other words: IT IS NOT OUR FAULT. IT IS BEYOND OUR CONTROL.

Shamans observe that we enter life with a high sheen surrounding our energetic cocoon. Shamans call this sheen our glow of awareness. Shamans have discovered that this energetic glow is food for inorganic beings, which are self-contained energetic entities that lack physical form; hence remain unseen by human eyes. Shamans call these specific inorganic beings, that prey upon the human glow of awareness, flyers, due to their energetic form and behaviors.

Shamans observe that flyers actually feed upon the glow of awareness of all human beings. Shamans maintain that the universe is predatory. If we reflect upon our own feeding behaviors, or that of all life forms on earth, we can see this same predatory principle in action: life feeds upon life. As grotesque as it is, why would we humans be exempt from serving as a food source for another form of life?

Shamans observe that without our glow of awareness we die. Furthermore, they observe that if we lose some of our glow it does indeed grow back. Flyers are careful, when they feed, to leave enough of our glow on our energetic cocoon so that it will grow back for future feeding. Through this method of “sustainable agriculture” they are assured a replenished food source.

Shamans state that flyers leave the glow of awareness in tact from the level of the ground up to the toes; this is the epicenter of self-reflection; this fixation of awareness at ground level creates the big baby. The big baby simply cannot see beyond itself. It is caught in self-neediness, self-pity, self-survival, self-importance, and its entitlement to be given recognition, value, care, love, and attention from without. Don Juan states that when caught in self-reflection we become easily offended, causing emotional embroilments that result in spikes in our glow of awareness that the flyers, in turn, consume. Don Juan instructed Carlos Castaneda to observe carefully the behavior of seemingly mature adults whom he admired, for instance, certain professors. Carlos discovered that behind the veil of maturity was a well-hidden insatiable self-importance, greedily seeking the admiration of all.

The good news, from the shamanic world, is that this human predicament is correctable. Shamans discovered that if we can break our attachment to the tyranny of the big baby’s perspective, that of self-reflection, etc., our growing glow of awareness changes texture, whereby it becomes distasteful to the flyers palate and they leave us alone. We are then able to restore our full glow of awareness around our energetic cocoon, freeing us from the limitations of self-reflection.

Through the centuries, shamans have devised methods to achieve this detachment from the big baby. One major venue of great relevance and accessibility, in our time, is focusing on our relationships with the petty tyrants in our lives. In general terms, a petty tyrant is anyone or anything that triggers our self-reflection in the form of the experience of feeling offended. This could be a person who refuses to acknowledge us or care about us despite their vows, or someone who blatantly violates us. This could also be a life circumstance, such as poverty or disease that we simply don’t deserve. Behind all offense is a blow to our self-importance: Why me? Being emotionally embroiled in the experience of being offended becomes the perfect opportunity to learn detachment. Shamans would call detachment arriving at a place of no pity, no self-pity, while caught by the “offensive behavior” of a petty tyrant. By arriving at a place of no self-pity in an interaction with a petty tyrant, who is indeed subtly or blatantly violating us, frees us from the self-reflective perspective of the big baby. We simply don’t take it personally.

This does not mean that we must turn the other cheek and allow ourselves to be hurt. However, we can free our defensive actions from the offended place of abuse and victimhood, shift to an objective perspective, and take appropriate action. Simply put, this means not taking the behavior of the petty tyrant personally, no matter how personally directed it is. From this perspective we can see the interrelationship of all things, which includes the petty tyrant as necessary, as both a dark force and as a teacher. After all, success in detachment from the big baby when encountering the petty tyrant frees our glow of awareness, enabling it to restore to its natural state, allowing us a much broader perspective of life.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of this detachment is a newfound ability to truly love. To love another requires going beyond the fixation of self-reflection, the big baby. I repeat: detachment is the highest form of love. Until we can fully detach from the self, we are not available to see, be with, or give to another without some level, however hidden, of self-interest.

Learning to detach from the big baby allows us unconditional compassion for all. We see the connection between the self and all things. Our glow of awareness, fully restored, is now capable of truly engaging the world beyond the self.

As always, should anyone wish to write, I can be reached at: chuck@riverwalkerpress.com or feel free to post a comment.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

#604 Turn Inward, Establish a Strong Line of Communication & Face the Possibility of Real Change

Jeanne Marie Ketchel
Channeled by Jan Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Can you give us some guidance for this day regarding the current energy that is pushing and leading us along in our lives?

Yes, My Dears, I am delighted to impart some insight, yet must I ask you each to sit with what comes, for only in quiet contemplation with the inner self will any outside guidance have meaning. Today I suggest that you do not offer the self any consolation or compromise, but that you push the self to impeccability. This is not a time to be flippant or hasty in your decision making or your attitude toward the self. It is a time to ask the self to stay focused upon the path of change and truth. Ask the self to sit quietly with the questions that arise; wait for the inner self to join you, coming to a quiet meeting place where clarity may be gained.

This is a good time to turn inward, but such turning inward will be difficult if you cannot face the real possibility of change. Change is what sits upon the horizon, within your grasp, but if you are fearful of real change then you will find that your inner work will be populated with a lot of conflicting individuals, all seeking to state their cases.

Such conflict will unsettle you, but if you allow the self to accept that you do indeed have many voices calling for attention your first hurdle will be swiftly sailed over. The second hurdle to tackle is achieving an open line of communication, in alignment with the inner self so that, no matter what the other voices attempt to draw you to, your thread of light to the balanced inner self remains strong and vibrant. Once this vibrancy of communication is set up it is a matter of using your tools of detachment, asking the outer self, the ego self, to go deeper, to turn from the noise and confusion of the outside energies and stay connected to the inner self. Detachment requires that this line of communication remain strong, that it be exercised daily, and that its connection lead to truth and change.

Then your process becomes one of determining, with the inner self, what course of action will be the best solution to your problems. The inner self may have the answer, unaided by outer guidance, or you may notice that something outside of you is trying to let you know that there is something you are not quite getting. Using outer energy as guidance is another step in inner work as you learn to understand what comes to you in your life; for much outer energy is only interested in stealing your attention, and this you must discern. Other outside energy is available to aid you. Your dilemma is to determine, within the context of your own life, which outer energy is available for good usage and which outer energy is only interested in feeding off you. And how do you make this determination? You take the dilemma to the inner self, of course.

The inner self knows everything. Once you forge a strong connection to the inner self, in whatever way works for you, you will find all the answers to your questions. This is why I ask you to sit quietly with the inner self, allowing the thread of connection to grow stronger, wider, more vibrant, until you have a stream and then a river of energetic connection between the two of you, with the outer self trusting and reliant upon the inner voice, knowing that it is indeed speaking truthfully, even though you may not like what it is telling you. If this is the case, do not run from what it tells you, but allow the self to go deeper still, asking for clarity, for proof that you must confront this truth of self at this time, and why? Why must you do this work at this moment? Something far greater than you can imagine is in store for you if you dare the self to stay connected to the inner self.

By staying in conversation with the inner self you will gain energy, you will find guidance, you will find your way to a more interesting and knowing self. And you will discover that even my words, brought to you from outside of you, are also found within. You already know all this. You just need to sit quietly and listen to the inner voice. Find your guidance within.

#603 The Big Baby is Bored: Offer it Creative Energies

Jeanne Marie Ketchel
Channeled by Jan Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Today, I would like to know: is there another step in detachment that would be helpful for us to learn at this time?

My Dearest Jan, and all of My Readers, do not doubt that there are many steps in achieving balanced detachment so that you may live a life of compassion for self and others severed from the issues that now attach to and attack you. However, the steps thus far imparted are the most crucial every day steps that one must not only learn, but also embed in the psyche, so that they become active participants in your lives. I stress that awareness of the self as an evolving being is of utmost importance as you continue to work on the self.

Inner and outer awareness combined are essential aspects of growth. I do not wish to command or contend too much at this point. It is far better that you work with what you now have at your fingertips, keeping aware of the self as desirous of change that will free you from the repetitive doldrums of life. Keep in mind that in order to truly change one must offer the self useful tools, but one must also push the self to utilize them.

I understand that it is often the case that the tools are readily understood, found extremely useful, but the difficult part comes in maintaining a practice. This must be your daily concern, My Dears. Once you daily remind your self of the process of learning detachment in Not Doing, Knowing of Purpose, and the third step of accessing the greater Responsible Energies of the Self then it is time to put them to use, in actions. This involves learning to care about the self, learning to trust the process of your life as it unfolds, and disciplining the self to truly allow for change, without fear and without sadness.

This process of enacting change is based in awakening the creative self, offering the self creative energies that may lie dormant, latent, or already quite active. Is it not far better to tap into the creative self rather than allow the big baby to rule? The big baby loves the creative self, and if you contemplate what this means you will find that your big baby will automatically sit in awe of the creative, troubling you less with its hungers and desires, its needs and its issues. The big baby is in need of some entertainment. It asks for something from you and although you may think it wants the usual, it is, in fact, asking you to notice that it needs something different; otherwise it would not be bothering you.

If your big baby were satisfied it would not rise up and make outlandish demands at the most inappropriate times or at its scheduled appointed times. You have trained your big baby to alert you, much as an alarm clock alerts you to wake up. It is not really asking for the same thing that your mind and body immediately revert to, simply because you have created a habit that easily quiets the big baby. No, your big baby is asking you to change. It is quite bored after all these years of the same thing and would like a change. Offer it some creative energies. Offer it something that has nothing to do with satisfying the human hungers, but offer it something that satisfies the spiritual hungers that it is alerting you to.

By practicing the first three steps in detachment you will gain insight into just what your big baby is truly yearning for. This is what I suggest is the next part of your process of change. Utilize what you are learning by taking it innerly and enacting it outerly. To gain a better understanding of how you truly operate ask the self to slow down, to listen very closely to the small voice inside, and just suppose that it is saying something you have never heard because you were too busy shushing it. What would that be?