#694 Don’t Hold Back

Jan Ketchel channeling Jeanne Marie Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Today’s weekly message falls on what was once a special day for you, your birthday. I extend birthday wishes, though I know you are far from this world in that sense.

Several people have forwarded us channeled messages regarding what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico, to our earth, to the animals, to ourselves, to life itself. All of them contain the same messages that you have been sending out for all the years that I have channeled you, the messages that we humans have come far from our true energetic roots and lost our connection to nature, earth, and spirit. At the same time that such messages are traveling around the globe, and the messages for all of us to awaken are stressed, I detect a new sensitivity and desire for truth, realness, and for connection to what really matters. I, personally, have always felt that most people, behind their fears and facades, are spiritually hungry and driven, but it has not been conventionally acceptable to be so. As the world became more technologically advanced and plastic we have further neglected our inner worlds.

I also feel that there is a big shift taking place, and whether it is intentionally set by our deeper yearning for connection to nature and spirit or not, it is happening anyway. This is the message that is being spread: change is being forced upon you, so are you going to take up the challenge and change as well?

We have conversed on this topic many times. Chuck has also written extensively about it in his blog. Is there anything new you would like to say on the subject? Or is there some other special message you would like to express on this once special day? Happy Birthday, Jeanne!

The messages of change and alarm must continue to spread, for although you may intuit a slow demise of earth’s resources over the past century, so must you now all take note: this disaster is of far greater consequence than you can imagine. Your time upon that earth must now become an era of full consciousness, your masses awoken with bitter truths, as the blood of Mother Earth does spill upon the shores. But of far more consequence is the impact upon the balance of nature that has thus far been heavily compromised and contaminated, left far too long. Balance no longer knows its own definition for it has long tilted into decay. The resulting heaviness of such poor attention to the balance of nature shows how powerfully mankind effects his environment.

This is an environmental disaster that has long been pending so do not make it into what it is not. Nor is this a spiritual disaster alone, but a far-reaching reality of your world. Your world is utterly compromised in that region, in the Gulf of Mexico, where there is, as of yet, no true knowledge to either describe it or to halt it. The fact is that greed is destroying the very earth. Earth, in its far superior mode of reaction to cause and effect, will not cease to spill its contents upon the waters and the land.

The biggest truth is that shift has already happened. Do you not see that it is no longer pending? Do you not see that the time of waiting for something to happen has passed? The thing that once seemed so far off and remote has already taken place. You are all living in a new world now. That is what you must wake up to. The world is different now.

Did you miss the moment of shift? On this day that I once celebrated as my own moment of shift, I suggest that you, each one of you, look at where shift has occurred in your own life; for something has changed now, and you are forced into acting and reacting differently in all aspects of life as a result. Notice that you have been pushed to change for a long time now. Accept that this is true for you, but also accept that this is true for all human beings.

Begin now to speak of this shift, of this push to change and awaken to the inner self. Your comments will be fully reciprocated, for there is a new language of intent spreading like wildfire upon that earth. It is the fire of new energy boiling up out of the Gulf of Mexico, burning back the times of greed and exploitation to reveal the utter truth of what life upon that earth is really all about: growth, transformation, evolution, respect for all living beings, love and compassion, and, above all, a time of shift to a level of higher awareness and to knowledge of that which lies beyond.

Take into consideration the gifts you are now being offered to truly shift your own awareness, to see what you could not clearly see before, to seriously consider that your time there is more meaningful than you have allowed yourself to believe, and that now you are being forcefully urged to embrace it to the fullest.

Do not hold back. I urge all of you to fully express your spiritual energetic selves. The earth itself is showing you how, without attachment to the resisters or the pretenders or the fearful ones. Go for it. Be one with the energy of your new times. Energy is abundant, but it must now come from within. The answers lie within.

#693 Chuck’s Place: FATHER

THE CONCERT

At Carnegie Hall, on a Tuesday night, a full day of work awaits, starting early the next morning. I make the sacrifice, my stepson is singing in Eric Whitacre’s Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings. Paradise Lost is the story of a lost generation of angel children left behind by their dying parents, walled off, without their wings, in a deeply protective structure. Logos is the leader of the now grown up lost children. The Gospel according to John begins: In the beginning was logos (the word), and the word was with God. Logos is the word, the law, the blueprint, the archetype of God, the ultimate father. In Eric Whitacre’s story, Logos frequently imbibes “amber,” some kind of hallucinogen that opens, for him, the channel to his deceased father, who communicates the message that he must protect all the children, at all costs. The decree of the father is to protect, maintain the status quo, keep things unchanging within the highly guarded and protected walled-in structure.

The love of Logos’ life is Exstasis. Exstasis is the Greek root for ecstasy, which literally translates to going outside of the stationary or static walls. Their names, Logos and Exstasis, foreshadow the ultimate conflict between conservative protection and freedom. Exstasis, in her own amber journeys, discovers from her own ethereal mother that her wings are hidden and retrievable, but she must take up the journey and go beyond the walls to visit the Oracle in the sacred temple. The Oracle insists that she face the truth, only the truth, to be guided to her wings. She passes this test and ultimately discovers her wings. However, in her final confrontation with Logos in which he burns her wings, she is killed, as the secure and protective father principle cannot tolerate her flight beyond the known, into potential danger.

A DREAM: The Great Train Robbery

I am at a train station on Long Island, right next to the ocean. In the first half of the dream, dimly recalled, I am part of a well-planned and executed plot to rob a train/railroad station. I recall a knapsack full of bundles of money. The robbery is successful, and involves the use of packs of dynamite, placed in several places around the station, set off just at the moment of getaway.

The consequence of this robbery is the end of this railroad station being included along this train line. A nostalgia sets in, particularly from my father. I join him in a campaign to restore the destroyed station. My father becomes involved in the beautification effort, the landscaping. I, in turn, distinctly recall where the planks and stones from the explosion had landed, which I easily begin to retrieve and restore. The dream ends as a smart detective, who has been tracking my activity, confronts me on the boardwalk about the crime.

I immediately awakened from this dream charged with the energy to record it, as well as contemplate it, with my consciousness still between worlds. I suspended my ego’s judgment about being a criminal and instead asked myself: what was the true nature or meaning of the crime? Not all crimes are criminal. When Prometheus stole fire from the Gods, mankind gained in consciousness. When Adam, at Eve’s urging, bit from the apple of the tree of knowledge, the world advanced in consciousness. In both cases, God’s, the father’s, rules were broken and there were punishments, paradise lost.

To go out alone, without the protection and security of father’s walls is both a reward and a punishment. In my dream, the destruction of the train station was a boon for me, a backpack full of money, a tremendous pick-up of energy. The seers on ancient Mexico devised the practice of recapitulation as a means of freeing oneself of static behaviors, returning that energy to the self for new possibilities. The train line, with its familiar stops and fixed rails, which cannot be deviated from, is the security of known habits and routines in life, the protective walls of the father. After I had committed the crime of breaking the routine, freeing myself from a familiar, well-trodden stop (the train station), I was drawn back to the old familiar place, by father, in the form of nostalgia for the old, known, unchanging stasis; the old way.

Regardless of our formative experiences with our actual fathers, real or imagined, present or absent, supportive or threatening, we are all our own fathers now! Formative experiences with our actual fathers are merely awakenings to this father within, the true father, who will guide and protect us through life. The father within us guards and protects the status quo of our lives: our habits, whether good or bad; our rules for ourselves, however limited or open they may be. The guiding principle of the father is the protection of the family. Inwardly we execute this father function by upholding the familiar safe-place train stops of our daily lives. Familiarity breeds safety and security, a bulwark against the changing sands of time. Zeus’s father, Kronos, Father Time, consumed all his children at birth to ensure the longevity, the unchangingness of his rule, that is, until his clever wife wittingly exchanged a stone for baby Zeus, which ushered in a new era.

Sometimes, of course, the conservativism of the father within us is wise to clip our wings. Daedalus, father of Icarus, constructed for his son wings to fly, made of feathers and wax. He tried desperately to warn his son not to fly too close to the sun. Icarus, so enthralled with his freedom, refused his father’s warning and suffered the inevitable consequence of his inflation, a perilous fall. Obviously there is a need for this protective father function, at times, but more often than not the supportive protective arms of our inner father attitude is just as likely to keep us entombed, limited within the safe walls of our familiar selves, however dysfunctional that might be.

Father is the guardian of the familiar: our inner family of known habits, behaviors and attitudes. The true challenge of my dream was to let go of a tried and true habit, to eliminate it from the repertoire of the self, to take back the energy spent on it and take up my wings, untethered to the tracks leading to an old station in life. But alas, I succumbed to the reconstruction of the walls of Logos, the protective rule of the father, enticed by the safety of the old familiar way, resulting in paradise lost. Thank God I woke up!

P.S.: As I conceived of this blog today, moving through the experiences of this past week, it never dawned on me that tomorrow is Father’s Day. There was no conscious intent to write on this topic, to highlight Father’s Day. I take that to mean that I was moved in this direction by the collective energy that marks the celebration of that day. In keeping with the intent of what I wrote, I wish you all a Happy Father’s Day! Whether we are male or female, our true father is the powerful father within us all, who exerts a tremendous influence upon the blueprint of our lives. To become fully conscious of the operation of this father principle within us is a worthy exercise for Father’s Day.

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

A Day in a Life: The Twelfth Step—Feminine Energy

On November 4, 2009, I wrote in my journal during the night: I wake up in a dream in heightened sexual arousal, having an orgasm. Oh, yes, I am dreaming and having an orgasm in my dream, so I go with it knowing that it is my own sexual energy that is aroused and activated in orgasm.

Each night for several weeks last fall, I asked to be connected with the women seers of don Juan’s line of sorcerers and each night I was taken on an adventure or given some experience, perspective, or knowledge. It began as a process in learning how to set unbending intent, to detach from the outcome, and to be totally open to what arrived. It grew into something much more than that as the nights unfolded. In this final night of dreaming with the women seers I was able to tap into my feminine energy. On the night before, I was in a heightened state of utter calm, encased in all-knowing awareness. As I wrote about last week in this blog, I believe this step of utter calm was only achievable because I had worked through the previous ten steps and understood the meaning of doing deep inner work, such as recapitulation. With that being said, I believe this final step was also achievable only because I had been able to access that place of utter calm knowing through the process of accepting and acquiescing to the journey I had taken in the past and by remaining open to the possibilities of the journey still to come.

Preceding this dream of orgasm and feminine energy, I had been practicing what I call the feminine energy breath as taught to Taisha by Clara.* This breathing entails inhaling in through the vagina up the back of the body to a point between the shoulder blades, holding it there, then continuing to inhale up the neck and over the top of the head to the third eye, and holding it there before releasing the breath down the face, over the front of the body and drawing it back into the vagina. I had been doing this breathing pattern three or four times during my morning yoga and shamanic practice, and during the day whenever I thought about it, for several weeks. The day before this dreaming episode I had done it pretty much throughout the entire day.

It felt so appropriate that I should have this dream of tapping into sexual energy at this point. I had, as I mentioned, gone into this dreaming process with the women seers with the intent to learn something from them and I felt that I had really worked through and processed everything they taught me. I trusted, quite innocently, that by setting my intent each night my call for guidance would be answered. Apparently, I was ready for this final step: to tap into and feel not only sexual feminine energy, but what I can only describe as being an all-encompassing energy, what the yogis call kundalini, as it rode up and spread like fire throughout my entire body. I knew however that it totally belonged to and came from within me, that it had nothing to do with another person, that it was my own energy on fire, so to speak; that it was real, accessible, and totally enjoyably present inside me. I just had to access it to discover the reality of it.

When I woke up out of the dream I knew that it was not something that only women could experience, but that every one of us, men and women, have this energy inside of us waiting to be accessed and experienced in this whole body release. And yes, it is feminine. That to me is the most interesting part of this final step. I fully understood that it was feminine in nature, but not limited to women. I was aware of the underlying psychodynamic of the masculine and feminine energy balance inside each of us and that we must learn to access both aspects of this energy, that they are present for very different reasons, and if we do not allow ourselves to tap into each one of them we will not be whole, either as human beings or as energy beings.

Throughout this twelve-step dreaming process I was aware of the presence of Jeanne’s energy alongside that of the women seers. I felt her presence, hovering in the background. Perhaps she was there as a mentor or protector, I am not sure, but her energy was present and distinctly different from that of the other energy I met with. All of that energy also felt distinctly feminine. How I knew this I am at a loss to explain, I just knew it was the energy of women.

As I finish writing about this process of dreaming with the women seers I am most struck by the unfolding of it. From the moment of first setting the intent, to being completely open and allowing myself to stay present in each dreaming event, I learned that everything is possible. I learned what it means to fully trust the experiential. It was a magical process in many ways, sometimes fleeting and difficult to grasp, other times very clear and concise, but definitely, experientially, as real as it gets.

Until next week, keep breathing and dreaming. And don’t forget that setting intent really does work. If you wish, feel free to write about your own dreaming experiences in the comment section below.

Love,
Jan

* NOTE: The breathing I mention is described on pages 45-46 in The Sorcerer’s Crossing by Taisha Abelar, available in our STORE under Shamanism.

#692 Choice Matters

Jan Ketchel channeling Jeanne Marie Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Personally, I have noticed an increase in experiences of energy. About a week ago I had a profound out of body experience (OBE). I have also noticed that energetically speaking, in the outer world, there has been a lot of activity. There have been days when everyone seems to be angry. Other days everyone we meet seems caught in an old place, and other days everyone seems flowing and full of awareness. It feels as if this particular time in our lives, and in the history of the world, is offering us such power to change, to do things differently, and yet we hesitate. I am speaking of personal issues that arise to remind me to keep changing, but also of the issues of our own country and the signs of change that all of us are constantly facing. The main realization that I experience, energetically speaking and otherwise, is that we are not in charge, that a far greater force is asking us to acquiesce and flow with the true awareness that we are all energy beings. I believe this force is inside each one of us. When we slow down and experience it, as I did in my OBE, we feel enlightened, but then we go back to our daily lives, seeking to join that world of energy with the state of our crumbling world and we come up against so many impenetrable walls, walls of self-doubt, of judgment, of the need to be human, as well as the visceral memory of the experience and wonder of it all, of the magic.

I understand that acquiescence to energetic reality takes time. But I also wonder, are people really understanding that our energy experiences, such as an OBE, are the true reality that we seek and must turn to now? I don’t think I am making an uninformed assumption. I fully feel that not enough people are getting what it means to be energy beings, that which you speak of so often, what don Juan, Carlos and the women seers teach about, what quantum physics is about, and what the religions of the world sprang from: the fact that we are all energy beings caught in a fixed reality and that it is up to us to dismantle that fixation, whether by fault or on purpose, in order to “see” better. I believe we are now in the midst of that process of dismantling and it does not matter to God, or Mother Earth, or the energy of intent how we go about that. Our awareness must now shift so that we do not lose this opportunity to evolve, to flow with the earth itself, as change is more fully brought upon us. It is now imperative that we all make some drastic changes in our personal lives.

Can you comment on my feelings that, each day, we are being confronted with powerful energy alerts? Some days, we are asked to fight through them, to express our anger and discontent. Other days we are asked to gently flow, but, at all times, we are being asked to be aware of the energy around us and how it affects and guides us to evolve. We are, I believe, being shown, each day, what we must change about ourselves, whether those things are inner aspects such as judgments, prejudices, fears or denials, or whether they are how we choose to live in the world. I feel that it is time for all of us to face what we have created, both inside us and outside us. Can you offer your comments and guidance as to what we have become and where we should go now?

My Dear One, the world you inhabit, the world of everyday life, is but one reality, yet it is the playing field for your evolving self. I do not like to speculate because, as you know, choice matters and that is really the crux of everything that you speak of today.

Each one of you must choose how you will live. Is this lifetime dedicated to building a nice ego, to engaging in self-important behaviors of inflation, bullying, self-aggrandizing—all necessary aspects of learning what it means to be human? Is this lifetime dedicated to victimhood, to eternal big-babyhood, to sucking off the lives and energies of others? Is this lifetime a predatory life or a simple life of deflation and self-loss, or are those aspects simply building blocks to an evolving self in this lifetime? Have you presented your self with challenges that require you to take abrupt and mighty steps out of an old world and into a new one?

You see, you must first address your personal challenge. What is your personal challenge? Where are you caught? Then the next challenge is to discover the means of taking that giant step to a new level of self and awareness. You see, your assumption, My Dear Jan, that you and the world are one, on a similar journey, is correct. You would not be living at this time if the world did not reflect the challenges that you each, as individuals, face. Your world outside of you is your inner world vividly reflected, staunchly produced and accessible. It can be so easy to see how to solve the issues of that world and how everything is being done wrong, going too slowly or quickly, in the opposite direction from what you know is right, and, yet, can you turn your frustrations with that world innerly and accept the energetic consequences of the decisions you personally make each day?

Energy is energy. You are, each one of you, energy. What flows outside of you has the ability to flow inside of you and affect you greatly. You are in control of your own energy and everything about you is set up for you to learn this fact. You may not feel or admit that you are, though you so easily may see that the world outside of you is all set for change, and perhaps for total collapse. Energetically speaking, whatever happens to your outer world is good for it. Energetically speaking, the flow of life is being directed by the choices that have been made in that world. Your own life is flowing according to the choices you make.

I do not judge or hold attachment to that world or the choices of individuals, except to point out your teaching tools and your learning process. Abide by the laws of energy and you will learn about awareness, awareness as clear-seeing. Perhaps this may come to you in intuitive knowing so that your choices may be clearly shown to you. Perhaps your awareness may come in the form of puzzling experiences that you must need in order to better understand what you need in life. Perhaps you will only have full understanding by incremental learning, rather than bursts of knowledge too big to hold onto and fathom. Most humans need to learn in this incremental manner, for true energetic reality is too much to take in.

In answer to your queries about the energy around you in your world and the intensities you now feel, I suggest that you attempt a new measure of attention to what is happening around you, because it is indeed a significant time to be alive. But in your personal world, what are you supposed to be learning? What is your personal growth challenge at this moment? How can you change with the changing world?

Change is inevitable. Are you going to flow with it, or are you going to perish in the vast sea of darkness? Really, the choice is simple. You must ask yourself: What do I fear most, the energetic unknown or the old familiar darkness? In order to change, one must enter the darkness, but you must elect to take the journey. Oh, and by the way, no matter how you answer that question, the journey will be the same. You must face your fears and learn that they too are but energetic realities to be confronted and passed through on the way to the next level of awareness.

You must confront everything you need to confront, whether you elect to go willingly or kicking and screaming. Don’t you know that you are all going anyway? What else is there? You are all beings who are going to die. How do you elect to experience death? That is the next question to ponder. And don’t wait too long to decide. Get right on it; there is no time to waste!

#691 Chuck’s Place: The Call to a New Era

Refusal of the Call

OFTEN in actual life, and not infrequently in the myths and popular tales, we encounter the dull case of the call unanswered; for it is always possible to turn the ear to other interests. Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative. Walled in boredom, hard work, or “culture,” the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved. His flowering world becomes a wasteland of dry stones and his life feels meaningless—even though, like King Minos, he may through titanic effort succeed in building an empire of renown. Whatever house he builds, it will be a house of death: a labyrinth of cyclopean walls to hide from his Minotaur. All he can do is create new problems for himself and await the gradual approach of his disintegration.” (From The Hero With a Thousand Faces; Joseph Campbell, p. 59.)

Walled in by the widening nigredo of oil blackening shores, America faces the consequences of its own refusal of the call. The earth, that mighty sentient being, releases its own curative now. Change is no longer an option; it is upon us. We have simply, run out of time.

Carlos asks: “What’s happening to me, don Juan?” I asked. It was a rhetorical question on my part.

It is the workings of infinity,” he replied. “Something happened to your way of perceiving the day you met me. Your sensation of nervousness is due to the subliminal realization that your time is up. You are aware of it, but not deliberately conscious of it. You feel the absence of time, and that makes you impatient. I know this, for it happened to me and to all the sorcerers of my lineage. At a given time, a whole era in my life, or their lives, ended. Now it’s your turn. You have simply run out of time.” ( From The Active Side of Infinity; Carlos Castaneda, p. 77.)

As Jeanne and I sat in our van at the Omega Institute parking lot after our first round of Tensegrity, we knew, an era of our lives had ended, forever. The distant call that we had heard for decades had arrived, loud and clear. We sat in calm silence. In the background was the definite knock of death; cancer had been diagnosed. No more illusions of infinite time in this world. The path of heart had fully materialized before us. We were in it, no turning back. Everything was different. Suddenly, the definition of our relationship totally shifted. Sexual energy was to be accrued, to be used in new ways. The only thing that mattered was the truth, lifting the veils, finding the energy body, and ultimately, meeting, energetically, in infinity. That knowing, that new era, continues to unfold to this day.

The world as we know it has, indeed, run out of time. We are all afforded, now, the gift to acquiesce and evolve this dream into a new era of unparalleled possibility.

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck