Monthly Archives: December 2010

Messages from Jeanne

#738 All Lies Within

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Jan Ketchel channeling Jeanne Marie Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Recently, I have been reading over some of my earliest written communications with you. At that time you stressed six points of importance that you urged me to consider as part of an ongoing process in learning how to live in a new way. Those six points were:

1. Stay in form (good physical shape).

2. Rest.

3. Allow for flow and take one step at a time.

4. Stop thinking so much.

5. Everything will work out the way it’s supposed to.

6. Learn detachment.

Since then you have expanded on those original points many times over, but heart-centered breathing and staying in balance seem to be the most important. I still see these six points as extremely helpful in the process of staying connected to the inner self and doing inner work. I ask you today if you have something new to offer us, as we all wish to remain alert, gaining in awareness, and as we continue to seek experiences of spirit, of our own spirit, even while we must confront our human selves every day as well. As we seek balance of these two aspects of self, what do you consider to be the most important consideration?

My Dear Ones, as you already know and, as Jan mentions, I always stress connection to the inner self through heart-centered breathing. This is the ultimate process that must be taken into consideration and adhered to: Listening to the inner self.

It does not matter what modality you find out in the world to entice you to healing or growing or expanding consciousness, as long as the inner self, the spirit that pushes and urges you to evolve agrees that it is a necessary or productive process, or that it is time for such activity.

The true spirit self needs a lot of attention. It holds your truths and these truths range from the truths of your past, as well as the truths of your present and your future.

The true inner spirit self, once you have awakened to its presence and its voice, requires constant attention so that its words of wisdom may be clearly heard. Then it takes work in learning how right those words are. It is okay to test what it tells you and to try to align with what is outside of you, but really, in order to truly grow and change, in order to heal, your inner spirit self has all the answers.

So, in addition to my original six pointers, I do stress heart-centered breathing, for it will lead you to deeper connection to the inner spirit self who holds ready all that you must find out about the self.

You, within your human body, hold all worlds. You are more than just flesh, blood, bones, brains and organs. You are also infinity itself. You are the doorway and within you are infinite doorways. Through resolution of the physical self you have the opportunity to explore the infinite self.

Keep in mind: All lies within. That is what I offer you today: All lies within!

Thank you Jeanne!

Please feel free to post comments or respond to this message from Jeanne in the post/read comments section below. Other ideas for maintaining balance and doing inner work are categorized under Guidance in the side bar to the left on this Channeling page.

Most fondly and humbly offered.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Reincarnation in a Pear Tree

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The inspiration for the title and theme of this blog began with a story Jan told me as we talked about reincarnation this past week. Here, in her own words, is what she said:

My grandfather was a builder and developer. When he retired from major construction projects such as building skyscrapers, churches and apartment buildings in New York City he put his creative energy into building houses in the hills of the Hudson Valley where he had purchased an old farm in the nineteen-forties and where he maintained a second home. As I remember him telling the story, he was getting ready to bulldoze a new road through an old orchard of gnarly apple, pear and plum trees. Always sensitive to nature—indeed the homes he built were more than likely to be nestled among tall trees—his choice of where to build was always planned so as to do as little damage to the natural environment as possible. On that day, he attempted to push his way through a row of old fruit trees, but one small, dead looking pear tree would not fall before the powerful machine upon which he rode. He described it as standing as solidly as if made of steel, and although he had knocked off quite a few large branches, almost halving the tree, he felt that it deserved to live as long as it desired, so he moved his road slightly to the left in order to accommodate this most auspicious pear tree.

As he worked on his housing development he watched with delight as the little pear tree blossomed, grew leaves and bore fruit. Later he stood on the back of his truck and picked the ripened pears, marveling at the mystery of this half dead tree, as year after year it continued to produce the biggest, juiciest and sweetest pears he had ever tasted. Years later he would still drive by, stop and stand on the back of his truck and reach up into the branches, filling his hat with golden pears.

I too picked pears from this magical tree. When waiting for the school bus or walking past it I never failed to recall my Grandfather’s story of how it had survived the bulldozer. It was a story I heard him tell many times and always with the same bright sense of wonder in his voice as the first time I’d heard him speak of the sturdy little pear tree that refused death and always produced such succulent life.

Years later, my youngest brother, when he was about eleven or twelve, asked me if I believed in reincarnation and immediately an image of that same little pear tree came to mind. When this same brother died a few years after that the little pear tree again instantly appeared before me. In fact, whenever I hear or think the word “reincarnation” an image of that little pear tree immediately floats before me. I see it now, a little golden pear tree, its trunk, leaves and fruit bathed in glistening golden light, and I am reminded of my grandfather and my brother, and the energy of all life, never ending.

The old gnarly pear tree is our old soul that continues its journey through infinity, manifesting new lives, new adventures, in the fresh fruit of our current life, our current incarnation. Though this life, this incarnation, will end as all fresh fruit ultimately breaks down, the life of our soul endures, accruing all the experiences of our current incarnation, constantly evolving onward to new adventure.

On the evening of December 9th, Jan and I sat calmly watching the flames in our wood stove, drinking a glass of wine. This was a special wine we had ordered, having to wait weeks for its arrival. I had just picked it up before coming home. This wine is a fair trade red organic wine without sulfites from South Africa called “Live-a-Little” Really Ravishing Red. On the label is an illustration of a woman dancing freely among the stars and a man in the background hanging from a crescent moon.

The phone rang. It was my daughter, Erica. She shared how well she’d done on her finals, then asked: “Are you guys doing anything special?” I paused, thinking: Well, it’s a Thursday night, why would we be doing anything special? I replied: “No, not really, why?”

“It’s December 9th, Dad…”

Suddenly, I was transported back into another life, a prior incarnation. Nine years ago, Jeanne died on December 9th. And, for the first time in nine years, I had not relived our personal passion play, amazing as it was. So fully interwoven now is Jeanne in the fabric of my current incarnation as we face oncoming time, that I was totally living outside the caboose, which represents looking backward and living in a life we have already lived. (Refer to last week’s blog.)

Deeply sensitive to my daughter, and all my children, seeds planted from the fruits of my journey with Jeanne in this world, I journeyed back a bit into that life as I spoke with Erica. How tender and vulnerable the transition between lives after the death of a beloved parent. How necessary to visit and revisit the caboose of anniversaries, to never forget a past, precious life.

For myself, I am in awe at the seamlessness of my flow through December 9th, fully available to oncoming time. Someone had even recently mentioned a woman dying of cancer at age 47, such a young age. I thought, when I heard it: Yes, that’s how old Jeanne was when she died of cancer. Even this “trigger” had not the power to awaken me to the cusp of December 9th. Earlier in the day of December 9th, a client had asked me about Jeanne’s life and death. I shared in detail her deepest issue and how her death had led to its resolution. Even this had not the energy to awaken me to a past life of December 9th!

Jeanne flows through me and many others as I enjoy the fruits of my current life. My attachment to memory and the specialness of that past life recedes as new days—oncoming time—are freed of old associations and obligations. The only real obligation to be fully present to life is to merge all lives into a living whole that partakes in life NOW. This is life in the pear tree; life that can handle the full impact and integration of all lives lived, venturing forth to new adventure, next year’s crop.

The ultimate irony and humor of the universe is that the celebration of December 9th was well prepared for and pictorially presented on our bottle of “Live-a-Little,” with Jeanne still dancing in infinity!

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

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Why Recapitulate?

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I’m going to get personal here, because I can only really talk about my own experiences with any authority. When I was a child I was viciously molested and raped by a man in my neighborhood. This abuse lasted the better part of sixteen years, mostly when I was very young, starting at age two until about age ten, but then intermittently until I graduated from high school and left home at eighteen to go to college. How could this happen, you might ask? How could parents, relatives and teachers not know what was happening? Did she not tell anyone? These are questions that I confronted over and over again as I recapitulated this segment of my life in a three year period beginning in 2001. Today, I specifically address the above questions because I know that anyone who has suffered abuse, sexual or otherwise, must also confront these questions.

I came from a family that was set up to ignore and deny even the possibility of such abuse. Perhaps most families are this way. My mother, a deeply depressed and angry woman, could not abide feelings of any kind. Perfection in everything was demanded and expected, nothing was allowed to ripple the surface of that perfection, no weakness within the family structure that she had created was allowed. If dissonance, conflict, trouble, or even emotion of any kind appeared it was quickly shut down, pushed away, swiftly disposed of, disappearing from sight and memory. My father, a deeply sensitive and deeply fearful man went along with this family structure. He spent his feelings elsewhere in giving time and energy to a long list of public service organizations, to other children and families in dire circumstances, to the poor, the depressed, the mentally ill. Within our own family everything was perfect, no sign of discontent, no sign of weakness, no sign of despair was allowed to leak out, the walls were solidly built and the entryways blocked. As a child, I quickly learned that this was how I too was supposed to construct myself, with strong barriers, not letting anything out, but also not letting anything in. This was, I believe, how the abuse I suffered could take place and my parents not “know about it,” because they chose not to. It didn’t fit into the world they decided upon, created and lived by.

I was seen as and indeed was an extremely shy child. This characterization never left me; it followed me into adulthood. The abuse, starting at such a young age, coincided with my emerging personality and perhaps created this withdrawn child self, but also the strict requirements of behavior upheld at home left little room for a true child self to evolve outwardly. The lessons and structures learned there fit well into the outside world, into the Catholic school I attended where we were taught how sinful it was to think about the self in any way, that selflessness was the most important of virtues, so how could I dare to speak about myself? My problems were nothing compared to other children in the world. Basically, I learned to maneuver through life according to the rules and demands of the authority figures in my life. I acquiesced and took the journey that was presented to me, with few options and little energy to do otherwise, so intent was I on keeping myself safe and protected no matter where I went.

My abuser groomed me from a very young age. In the beginning the abuse was made to seem like games, strange games, often painful games, but over several years they became part of a process, unfolding in a different world from that of my closed family world; however, the requirements of those two worlds were really not that different. I went from one secret world, where obedience and absolute allegiance were required to the other where the same structures were in place. I learned, over time and through hard won lessons, how to seamlessly maneuver within and between these two worlds, and as a result they rarely intersected. On occasion, when they did threaten to collide, I found the means to contain and protect myself, to keep myself safe, by dissociating, by turning to new worlds of my own in creativity and imagination. I sensed the ever-present potency of mental disintegration, but I avoided it the same way I had been taught to avoid any feelings or emotions; I shut it down, pushed it away, and carried on, withdrawing from that which threatened to trigger it.

In essence, I learned what my parents taught me. You don’t speak about yourself, your feelings, your problems. Instead you get depressed, you harden yourself, you get busy and spend your energy on others, but above all you never crack, you never let anyone see that there is anything wrong with you. It was perhaps the biggest and best lesson I could have learned at the time. In essence, the parents I received gave me the lessons I most needed at the time in order to survive, but in so doing I was also perpetuating a lot of secrets and lies, having to live out rules and mental constructs that did not really belong to me. I had to uphold my parent’s world. And even though, for a long time, it worked for me, one day I could no longer bear the burden of it. I could no longer carry forth the long held secrets, my own or theirs, and that was the day I knew I had to recapitulate that part of my life. It had ruled me for too long and I wanted to be free of it.

That was the original intent of my recapitulation, to set myself free of what did not belong to me and from what I had kept pushed down inside me for so long. I finally decided, consciously or unconsciously or a little of both, that it was time to let the child self speak about what had happened to her, to offer her the words to say what she could not even begin to fathom. She needed an adult to put into words the horrific events of her life, to make sense of them and to break the long held silent pacts that had been established before she even knew she existed, the pacts set in place by the adults in her life.

To me, this became the impetus that sent me on an awakening journey, an awakening that had been triggered many times, on many occasions in the past, but that I had to be in alignment with in order to truly begin to confront the lies, the secrets, the structures of a world that was not really the world I wanted to live in. The recapitulating of those early years of my life was a most painful journey and I admire anyone who dares to step into the mire of their past and confront the petty tyrants and fearful demons who stand blocking life from unfolding as it truly can.

I know what it means to feel now, to feel not only emotionally but physically everything that happened and happens to me. But I also know the liberating feelings of freedom from that which does not truly belong to me. I know what it means to embrace my truths, my desires, my needs, and my perceptions of a new world, under my terms. I know what it feels like to wake up every day knowing that I conquered the past, knowing that I won all the battles this time, on my terms, in my way, using inner work; truth and honesty my only weapons.

I discovered another thing as I undertook the recapitulation adventure of those early years of my life. I discovered a spiritual core that was as indestructible and strong as I always knew it was, the core that kept me whole and safe, even as I took a most disheartening and painful childhood journey. I rediscovered what it was that kept me alive and sane all those years. It was myself. It was myself finally freed of everything that had been imposed, and once reunited with that true self the adventure took on a momentum of its own. It has not stopped even though I still must recapitulate what comes to greet me on a daily basis. But honestly, that childhood past is done. It is solidly placed in the context of who I am and where I am going now. Now is all that matters, but I would not be present, facing oncoming time, NOW, if I had not dared to face the past and free myself of it.

I offer this essay today to all of you who are taking the first steps into the journey of recapitulation, to those who are well into it, and to those who fear venturing inward. I can only stress again, in so doing you will become free. You will become YOU. It’s a pretty great place to be!

If you wish, feel free to share or comment in the Post Comment section below.

Sending you all love and good wishes,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

#737 Experience Your Innocent Self

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Jan Ketchel channeling Jeanne Marie Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Today I ask you for a message of guidance for all your readers. Please tell us something of importance for our world, our time, and our spiritual progress. Thank you. I breathe into my heart center and accept your energy. What guidance do you offer us today?

Truth must reign. Honesty, fairness and truth must permeate every sinew of your body and every word spoken from your mouths, otherwise there will remain blocked energy, unavailable, holding you back personally and collectively. In order for advancement upon the earth there must be a new innocence established. This must begin within the self.

Only in allowing the true self access to life will true healing and growth take root. Only in acknowledging the superiority of the energy self will life advance beyond the pettiness and rivalry that now dominates your world. Only through accessing and utilizing the true self will your lives change and the world at large experience a much-needed shift.

You see, things have proceeded far from the original intent of man’s purpose. Life upon that earth was meant for experiencing the self in a world of solids, in a world of concrete reality so that the energy self could build strength and character, so that the lessons learned inside the structures of a life upon that earth could be more fully understood within terms of energy.

However, the energy self no longer dominates. The solidity of life upon that earth overshadowed the purity of the energy self. Thus a struggle began between the two selves. The energy self from which all are born and all will return has suffered greatly, but this is not to be despaired, for this is also its journey. The human self offers the lessons of life to urge this energy self to awaken.

Find in the human body the energy of life. Find the energy that is yours personally and do not be afraid of its innocence. Do not fear its exposure to the world, for it is only in allowing it to exist that you will change the position you personally occupy in that life and that world. In so doing the world itself will change, for the collective energy seeks change as well.

In experiencing your innocent self you will eventually be greeted in return with equal purity of energy from without. Set the intent to be open now so that your personal channel may be flowing, so that your energy may be available to give and receive. Set the intent to speak your truth both to the self and to others.

Set the intent to breathe and feel and act with goodness and honesty in every breath your take. Breathe out your negativity, your anger, your disappointments, your judgments, and your disgusts. Breathe in your truths, and your innocence will thank you for finally paying attention to its needs.

It is a long journey—the healing, awakening journey—but what else can you describe that would serve your soul? What else is there really that matters?

Thank you Jeanne!

Please feel free to post comments or respond to this message from Jeanne in the post/read comments section below.

Most fondly and humbly offered.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Facing Oncoming Time & Recapitulation

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In his book The Art of Navigation Felix Wolf shares the following anecdote from Carlos Castaneda.

“The Nagual always maintained that the average man traveled through life in the caboose, always looking back, always keenly aware of his personal history, his experiences, and his identity as an accumulation of the past. It was one of his favorite analogies. A warrior who wants to become a man of knowledge, however, has to turn around and face life as it unfolds in front of him. Instead of facing receding time he has to face oncoming time, as he put it. Life in the caboose versus life in the engine.” (From page 60. *)

Isn’t the shamanic practice of recapitulation in fact living in the past, the exact opposite of facing oncoming time? Is there not a contradiction here? Doesn’t recapitulation strap us firmly to a seat in the caboose with a view out the back window, at life that has already passed us by? What about total presence in the NOW, the coveted goal Carlos describes as being seated in the engine, directly perceiving oncoming time, engaging life to the fullest? To answer these questions and resolve this seeming paradox we must first explore what it takes to truly live life in the moment.

Both the seers of ancient Mexico and the Buddhists place a premium on reaching a state of inner silence to become mindful, fully aware and present in the NOW. Toward that end Buddhist masters prescribe the practice of meditation where we learn to quiet our restless hearts and become keen observers of all that presents. The molding of this observing self that allows life to be known directly, without the interference of the thinking, judging mind, prepares us to be innocently present in the moment, freed of the cogitations of the mind that interprets versus lives in the moment. Achieving detachment from the ceaseless internal dialogue of the mind is certainly a major component of mindfulness. Like the Buddhists, the seers of ancient Mexico employ their own active meditation practice of magical passes to achieve this coveted state.

Another major component of mindfulness is access to a fully integrated self. How can we be fully present if parts of who we are remain fragmented, unknown and tucked away in the luggage compartment of the self? Furthermore, the legacy of our hidden baggage is the burden it places on life in the present. For instance, if we carry deep wounds of loss, abandonment, negligence, and violation, we will surely be limited in opening to all that life invites us to in the present moment. Recapitulation is the shamanic practice that frees us from these limitations and fully unites the self to be present in the NOW.

In recapitulation we allow ourselves to be taken on a train ride to all the stations of life already lived. We arrive at each of these old stations with our present self keenly observing, taking the journey with our younger self that has been stranded at the station, frozen in time. Our present self opens to the full experience of our younger self, and thereby faces fully the confusion and struggle that once froze our younger self. Often we discover in recapitulation that our younger self was forced to leave its body under the impact of overwhelming trauma and hence the full truth of that moment was never consolidated and made real. In recapitulation the full truth of the past becomes known, allowing its burdens to be released. The energy and innocence of the younger self is freed and united with the present self, firmly seated in the engine, facing oncoming time.

Part of what we encounter as we face oncoming time are triggers that take us out of the present moment. Meditation can help us to remain present in spite of a trigger, but it can’t help us to fully open to the moment if the trigger signifies a lost, frozen part of the self. Life often places triggers in our path to awaken us to discover our lost selves. We cannot simply transcend our triggers and fully open to life without recapitulating the truth that lies behind the trigger. We must be open to completing all our journeys, especially the train wrecks buried deeply within the self if we are ever to be fully available to life in the NOW.

Recapitulation, then, is actually a major component of being able to face oncoming time. Freed from the past we can allow life to approach us with all that it offers, unfiltered, without limitation. From this vantage point, firmly seated in the engine, we can read clearly the signs and synchronicities life presents us with to guide our evolutionary journeys, in infinity—NOW!

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

Until we meet again,
Chuck

* NOTE: The book mentioned in this blog is available through our Store listed under the category of Shamanism.