A Day in a Life: Dreaming Intent

February 16, 2011 Jan Leave a comment

To follow up on Jeanne’s message of the other day, Navigating the Mystical, I decided to practice intent last night. Right before falling asleep, when I was already drowsy, I set this intent: I intend to know the moment I am falling asleep and remain aware of dropping into a dream. I want to know the moment this is happening and retain the experience. Immediately, I closed my eyes and was aware of literally feeling like I was dropping into a dream.

This is what I experienced: I felt as if I were more than one being or awareness. I was the dreamer in the dream and a dreaming observer as well. I saw my own hand reach out from the left, palm open and facing upward. “Oh look, there’s my hand,” my dreaming self thought. Then almost immediately another hand appeared on the right holding a red flower in its palm, as if showing it to me or offering it to me. I felt I should look at it closely. My dream observer, aware of also being the owner of the hand said, “Oh, look at that, two hands, and look at that beautiful flower.” At the same time, my awareness as the dreamer in the dream concentrated on looking closely at the flower. It was as if I were looking through a microscope at this close up scene of the two hands, and I was both inside the scene with awareness and I was also the outer observer looking through the microscope. I woke up immediately and thought: “It worked! My intent worked!”

Enthused by this experience I decided to try again. This time, I set a new intent, which was: I intend to see everything in my dream with crystal clarity. Again I felt myself dropping into dreamland. This time I landed in a small rowboat. I appeared to be on an arctic lake formed by a melting glacier. It reminded me of hiking up Svart Isen, a huge glacier in Norway that I once tramped up and had a most amazing experience on, as I watched and heard the rumblings and shiftings of this massive ice flow, its colors almost Caribbean blues, a contrast that, at the time, I found remarkable. There on top of the northern world were the same intense blues of the waters of the Caribbean Sea; fascinating.

Anyway, in my dream, I am in this tiny boat floating without oars into the center of this huge glacier. Everything is crystal clear! The word “Crystalline” was repeating throughout the dream experience, in a sort of voiceover, though I knew it was my own voice. I floated further into the glacier and was soon surrounded on all sides by this crystalline world of ice. It was not blue as in my experience in real life, but absolutely “crystal clear,” just as I had set in my intent.

Again, I woke up out of this experience quite fascinated by the literal quality of my dreaming self and the response of the universe, as it so nicely allowed me to have these experiences. This reminded me of what Jeanne had said in the message on Monday, that you must remain aware of how your intentions or requests are answered, that they may not be as clear or straightforward as you desire. However, I thought my dream experience was humorously playing right into my intent to have an experience of crystal clarity. It literally gave me an experience of just that!

I find this process fascinating, the way the psyche and the universe, the dreaming body and awareness, do work hand in hand. I got what I asked for! In this case, I received several gifts: proof that intent does indeed work because I fell into a dream, I retained the dream experience, and I got crystal clarity, all the things I desired. And, in addition, my intent from the first experience “to remember” carried over into the second experience, thus showing that intent, once set, is planted for future use.

Perhaps my recitations on these experiences may add to your own personal incentive to try dreaming intent or any other intent. As subtle as these experiences may seem, they were in fact just what I asked for and I felt quite satisfied with the night’s work. The rest of the dream night proceeded from there. As I fell back to sleep the third time, I simply set my intent to keep going along the same lines. As I went deeper into sleep and dreaming, the word “crystalline” kept popping up, my awareness reminding me to look closely, very clearly at my dream world, which I was aware of doing.

See if this conversation that Carlos Castaneda had with don Juan, from pages 22 and 23 in The Art of Dreaming makes any sense in how dreaming intent works:

Don Juan explained that there are entrances and exits in the energy flow of the universe and that, in the specific case of dreaming, there are seven entrances, experienced as obstacles, which sorcerers call the seven gates of dreaming.

“The first gate is a threshold we must cross by becoming aware of a particular sensation before deep sleep,” he said. “A sensation which is like a pleasant heaviness that doesn’t let us open our eyes. We reach that gate the instant we become aware that we’re falling asleep, suspended in darkness and heaviness.”

“How do I become aware that I am falling asleep? Are there any steps to follow?”

“No. There are no steps to follow. One just intends to become aware of falling asleep.”

“But how does one intend to become aware of it?”

“Intent or intending is something very difficult to talk about. I or anyone else would sound idiotic trying to explain it. Bear that in mind when you hear what I have to say next: sorcerers intend anything they set themselves to intend, simply by intending it.”

“That doesn’t mean anything, don Juan.”

“Pay close attention. Someday it’ll be your turn to explain. The statement seems nonsensical because you are not putting it in the proper context. Like any rational man, you think that understanding is exclusively the realm of our reason, of our mind.”

“For sorcerers, because the statement I made pertains to intent and intending, understanding it pertains to the realm of energy. Sorcerers believe that if one would intend that statement for the energy body, the energy body would understand it in terms entirely different from those of the mind. The trick is to reach the energy body. For that you need energy.”

Intend by intending? Find the energy body? Does it all sound too idiotic, as don Juan suggests? So what, just try it, set your dreaming intent and see what happens. These are the means to beginning a process of navigating the mystical, as Jeanne suggested. It works. Good luck and good dreaming!

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

Thanks for reading! Sending you all love and good wishes,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

#746 Navigating the Mystical

February 14, 2011 Jan Leave a comment

Sorry this is so late in getting out today!

Written by Jan Ketchel and including a channeled message from Jeanne Ketchel.

Over the past few weeks we have been exploring, with Jeanne, practical techniques for navigating through life while confronting our issues and embracing our journeys. As many of you know, back in 2001, I began a very intense three-year personal journey, a recapitulation, as the seers of ancient Mexico call it, reliving the most important and transformative moments of my life. However, it was not until I actually began that recapitulation process that I was able to clearly perceive those moments as the most important and transformational, before that they were either merely disturbing experiences or totally unknown memories. I also learned that if one has a knowledgeable, aware, seasoned guide as one takes the recapitulation journey, one is indeed fortunate, even though the bulk of the work to be done lies within the self, both the questions and the answers.

During my odyssey into my self, as I took that recapitulation journey, I was offered daily opportunities to break through perceptions, judgments, definitions, and just about everything I had previously been taught to emerge on the other side of myself in a new world. In more modern terms, I took a transpersonal journey, working from where I was in my life at the time and going far back through myself to emerge in the prebirth world of the so called collective unconscious, as termed by Jung. This transpersonal world is what I would describe as access to all knowledge, all worlds, through all time. It is where ancient wisdom resides, and where all things are possible.

Lately, Chuck and I have been studying the work of Stanislav Grof, who over the past half century or so, has explored the mystical experience in great depth, and who coined the modern term transpersonal to describe the realm of the collective unconscious. He was disturbed by the fact that within Western modern science and psychology there was nothing to define the mystical experience, no categories existed and no credence was given to this most ancient of experiences. Experiences of the sublime, such as out-of-body and near-death experiences, as well as transcendent meditation experiences were given little or no value. In essence, experiences in the ancient pre-scientific world were pooh-poohed, dismissed as meaningless and crazy in the face of real hard-proven scientific fact. Grof seriously began to explore and document mystical experiences and attempted to bring this ancient wisdom into mainstream psychology. It still sits somewhat on the edge, though many, many people in the West have been offered validation and acceptance of their experiences of the unexplainable through his work and that of many others.

Anyone who has had experiences of the mystical knows how impossible it is to dismiss the experience, especially in cases when it has been transformational. Of course, it can be pushed aside as meaningless or disturbing, which is what I once did in an attempt to stay in tiptop control over everything in my life, but as time went on it became increasingly more difficult to do so as the experiences began to intrude on real life. It was not until I was ready to receive the messages that these mystical experiences were attempting to deliver that I could finally turn and look them straight in the face. I believe everyone has had experiences of the mystical and sublime and, when ready, these encounters will be accepted into conscious awareness.

In undertaking a recapitulation journey, if properly guided, we learn not only how to use these experiences to continue our life’s journey, but we may also be afforded the opportunity to use them to transport us to the transpersonal realm, where all knowledge exists, the personal, the pre-personal, and awareness of the interconnectedness of all energy, including us.

I have, and I say this with great humility and thanks, learned to transport back to the transpersonal quite easily. Through my recapitulation process I eventually learned to trust the mystical experiences I had, to allow myself to go where they took me, documenting my journeys, gathering from them the truth of the real possibility that all of us can access this transpersonal world volitionally. Although Grof led many experiments into the transpersonal using LSD, I have never used drugs. I didn’t need them. Life itself was enough of a catalyst to get me where I needed to go, as it rocketed me into the surreal over and over again, both before I ever heard about recapitulation and then certainly once I began that journey.

Once I learned to cultivate those experiences, understanding them as meaningful experiences of awareness, I gained a personal understanding of the mystical and how we can use it to guide us, through understanding not only life, but death and the greater universe as well. Now, after ten years of journeying by choice, I know I can never stop. It is my path, my intent, and my most personal challenge as well. Unfortunately, I can’t live there all the time, much as I would like to. In the meantime, I am happy to write about it, and help others achieve the peace it offers.

What I am getting at today in this blog is the true fact that we can all do this. I am nothing, no one special. I call myself by no name except the one I have in the real world, and even that I am not that attached to. In all the work I do, I seek only to offer guidance based on what I have learned through my experiences in the transpersonal world, the shamanic world, a world where everything goes, where one is able to access the darkness as well as the light, where one can experience the mystical without fear. It is my greatest wish that all of you be able to do so too, to allow for the mystical be a fuller part of your personal journey, without fear.

Once again, I turn to Jeanne, my personal guide and yours, and ask her to offer some insight into how we can access her world. How can people access your world, especially those who do not have access to means beyond their control, as I did, or just perhaps do not realize they do? Jeanne, what guidance do you offer us today along these lines?

Access to the mystical, as Jan terms it, is really only available through the self. One cannot have such experiences through others, but only through personally challenging the self, for otherwise there is no meaning to be had. In reading of such experiences one gains great benefits; by that I mean: the benefit of suggestion. Use of suggestion and awareness of possibility lead to intent, and that is the key to becoming open to all experiences, no matter what world one wants to enter.

Say you wish to get a new job. A new job may or may not magically appear, but I guarantee that if you set your intent for a new job, visualize yourself in it and set your specific requirements, that job will materialize. Intent works very specifically.

Intent can be used in all cases of desire. It can result in negative as well as positive challenges. You can intend illness, death even. You can intend a fuller life, drastic change in your personal experiences upon that earth. Your intent affects you, but others as well. If you keep your intent focused on the self, on doing inner work, on challenging the self to learn how to become nonjudgmental and pure, you are doing not only the self, but the entire world a favor. So, all of that being said, if you begin to set your intent in a certain direction, you will have experiences.

If you wish for experiences of the mystical, I suggest you begin a process of intending such experiences, but you must then be ready for what comes. I do not mean to alarm you, but you had better also set your intent to be able to withstand the process that will undoubtedly unfold. You must also set your intent to become aware, so that you do not dismiss what comes to you. You must be able to comprehend that it is truly happening.

Yes, I agree with Jeanne wholeheartedly here. This aspect is perhaps the most important. If you aren’t able to recognize the mystical experiences as such you will miss a lot. I still have to train my awareness, to find ways to allow myself to accept the truth of my personal experiences without the rational mind interfering, whether psychic knowing or experiences of the sublime. Noticing them and fully accepting them can be a challenge, as the rational will always step in to correct, that’s its job; and then there is the ego to deal with too, but that is another blog. What else should we set our intent to do, Jeanne?

Intent must be embraced wholeheartedly and used wisely, in an all-encompassing, thorough manner. Do not shirk yourself from having a full experience by laziness or over-eagerness. It is a serious matter and a serious process to engage in, this desiring entry into other worlds. One must be ready. You may already be at the point of readiness, but use practical and intelligent steps in setting your intent, otherwise you may not notice or be able to fully comprehend your experiences. But that being said, I do not wish to thwart any effort or desire for action. Take action on your personal behalf with innocence at your core. You can even set your intent for accessing innocence, for an experience of pure innocent energy, for instance, and you will surely have it.

As I mentioned, your awareness is key, as well as your attention to how your mind works, for it will pop up immediately to tell you that, “Oh, that didn’t just happen.” If you listen to that you will of course not be able to fully access the experiences that you so desire.

For what reasons can you suggest that people might want to access the mystical, Jeanne?

There are, of course, a multitude of reasons, personal and otherwise, but I would suggest that, to begin with, you stick to the simplest reason: to have an experience of energy, because that is really what this is all about, experiencing the self as energy. You can do this while awake, asleep, in meditation, volitionally. Or you can call upon the universe to give you the experience and then be ready for what comes; be alert, and wait for its arrival. If you ask for something you will receive it, but in what form you do not know; so you must be alert and understand how the universe sees fit to address you at this time in your life.

Beyond that simple reason—to simply have an experience of the energetic interconnectedness of all things—a far greater purpose of such experience is to gain personal awareness and insight, so you can understand why you are you, what you are alive for, where you came from and why, and where you are going. The greatest purpose in life is to gain awareness and that involves awareness of energy, how it works—not intellectually as so many do—but by personal experience. And, as Jan suggests, accessing the mystical, simply because you want to, is a good way to start.

I also warn that if you are not ready, that is okay too. But I ask that you begin to open to the truth of the mystical anyway, that you begin training yourself to trust that it is possible, that you will one day be ready, and that you will be better prepared when that day comes by your openness to and your awareness of the possibility that everything is available to you, the mystical as well as the rational.

Good luck, My Dears, as you challenge yourselves into having new experiences. You can do no great harm to yourselves, if you stick to practical and sober means. And please be patient.

Thank you, Jeanne!

Please feel free to post comments or respond to this message in the post/read comments section below. And thank you for passing the messages on!

Most fondly and humbly offered.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: 2012 is Now!

February 12, 2011 Chuck Leave a comment

“I am convinced that for man to survive now, his perception must change at its social base,” states don Juan Matus on page 3 in The Art of Dreaming. For don Juan this change, an evolution of consciousness, means that we must embrace the wholeness of our beings, a world of energy, the wavelength self I wrote about in last week’s blog.

Stanislav Grof points out in an interview with nonsoloanima TV that the end of the Mayan calendar at the winter solstice, December 21st next year, simply represents the end of a cycle of time. This cycle is the completion of the sun’s rotation around the solar system upon which the Mayan calendar is based. This completed cycle in galactic astrology results in an alignment that births a new era. However, all birth is preceded by labor. This labor can manifest as aggression, destruction, or violent revolution as new life struggles to be born. In addition, there must be a death, or ending to the old way of being, to bring forth new life. The question for mankind is whether this birthing process will result in the necessary evolution don Juan describes, or will the forces of resistance put an end to our human experiment.

Grof also points out that December 21, 2012 is but the apex of a bell curve. The changes of 2012 have been rapidly unfolding for decades. Undoubtedly, the birth of rock and roll in the 1950s followed by the psychedelics of the 1960s was the unleashing of the energy needed to move masses of humanity to shift into a deeper search for themselves, at more profound levels. In fact, for decades this mass shift in consciousness has launched a major revolution to bring down the solid precepts that have governed awareness for centuries.

Energetic mass movements, such as the Internet, are rapidly tearing down all attempts to maintain or create walls of illusion. Facebook, though I decry its dark side of self-importance and its exposure to the greedy marketing giants, can probably be credited with bringing down the government in Egypt as the energy of change was initially directed by postings on Facebook, telling people where to gather for the nonviolent revolution. The election of Obama, also largely orchestrated through digital wizardry, marked an earlier magical evolutionary advance of consciousness, materially realized.

The energy of 2012 has been advancing for decades and we are clearly near the climax of this struggle. Stepping, for a moment, out of time and viewing ourselves from a cosmic perspective, we are indeed living in a highly charged, agitated energetic time. The speed of change appears greater than our human ability to absorb and indeed this is probably true, hence, the pressure to evolve into out greater energetic selves. Whether this revolutionary energy is sufficient to push through the birth canal and bring forth this necessary transformation into new life is still an open question. The forces of resistance undermining change, so apparent in Obama’s presidency, are evident everywhere on the globe. We are not a world of individual countries and governments, despite those illusory walls. We are now an interconnected global economy where the special interests of the parasitic few are relentlessly seeking new ways to spin reality to hold onto power and control.

Bringing this challenge down to a very individual level, we do well to inventory the status of the power monger within ourselves: the inflated ego with its rationality über alles. Are we taking on the challenge of allowing ourselves to claim the fullness of our energetic beings? What is the status of our own inner revolution, our own transformational journey of rebirth? Are we allowing ourselves the opportunities to wake up in our dreams and explore our greater consciousness beyond the body, or does rationality still dismiss the possibility? Do we allow ourselves to go inward in meditation, or do we choose medication and/or materialism? Do we free our breath, or remain constricted in the rigid body armor of defense? Do we open up to the world of energy by engaging our intent, or do we remain frozen in doubt?

I say, Viva La Revolución! But remember, revolution starts at home, within the self, by embracing the depths of our energetic selves. The revolution of 2012 is now! Let’s all fight for that necessary change at our social base; let’s insure our survival as evolved energetic beings!

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: Instinctual Fear & Learned Fear

February 9, 2011 Jan Leave a comment

In the channeled message on Monday, Jeanne and I discussed fear as the culprit that sets up blockages inhibiting access to the fuller self, as a hindrance on a path of inner growth. After my channeling I began to think about instinctual fear. I know it is necessary and must be utilized and I realized that perhaps it may not have been clear that Jeanne was really only talking about fear that has become habit. Fear that has become habit is something quite different from instinctual fear.

We have a very elderly dog. She is rather large, a shepherd-husky mix, with thick fur, big ears, a long furry tail and severe hip dysplasia, a condition not uncommon in those breeds. She has grown afraid in her old age; in human years she is 119 years old and counting. In the old days nothing would have stopped her from bounding out of the house early in the morning; she would have pounded her way through even the highest of snowdrifts to roll around and do her business. Now she hesitates at the door, looks outside, assesses the situation and if it feels slippery to the first timid touch of her paw on the flagstone porch she will turn around and go back into the house, not at all interested.

This is learned fear. This is fear that is the result of falling on the ice, slipping in the snow, and not being able to get up. When she has fallen she has probably also hurt herself, though she will rarely ever complain or make a sound. This is the natural tendency of an animal to not let it be known that it is weak, for fear of attack from predators—instinctual fear. As we have observed this new behavior over the winter we have noticed that the fear of falling now almost rules her every activity. Even inside the house she hesitates before walking across a stretch of wood floor—preferring to suffer the odds, she often takes it at a run rather than simply walk across it to follow us. We have devised methods of helping her get beyond this very real fear, by putting a leash on and urging her out the door, making a path for her in the high snow, running out ahead of her and urging her forward, laying rugs over the ice and throughout the house. With our help she has, sometimes, been able to conquer her fear.

I like to look to nature for instruction. I think about animal fear, the instinct mechanism that says: Uh-oh, I’m in danger. I see a deer standing stricken with fear before the headlights of my car, before it leaps out of the way, instinctually knowing that it had better move. I see the scared rabbit shivering in the snow as it is approached by a predator, before it too bounds off to safety. I hear the birds instinctively shrieking, sending up distress calls, flying out into the trees to distract hungry predators from their nests.

We humans also have these natural instincts. When a situation arouses this kind of instinctual fear, we tune into our natural state of being and without forethought we act, we use it to protect ourselves or others. Would we not run out of the road if a car were approaching or save our child from being run over? Would we not leap out of the way of a hungry predator? However, we too, just like our old dog, have learned behaviors, learned fears. We all have new fears that we have adopted as we have navigated through life, and these new fears may interfere with our natural inclination to experience life, with the instinctual drive to live full lives, exploring our greater meaning and purpose. These learned fears might actually suppress that instinctual mechanism lying at our core to the point where we cannot even act to save ourselves from danger.

The impact of learned fear must also be taken into consideration as we investigate our willingness and capacity to take a spiritual journey. What fears do we have that prohibit us from taking the journey that our spirit invites us on, showing us almost daily what it wants us to learn about ourselves so that we are not held back any longer from more fully integrating our natural selves into our lives? Personally, I used fear, instinctual and learned fears, my whole life, to protect myself; this is fairly common, most people do this. But also, I knowingly used those fears to keep myself from having experiences that made me uncomfortable. Here the unconscious came into play; though unaware of its aid at the time, it kept me from experiences that might trigger other unconscious, repressed experiences that would have surely interfered in my growth into adulthood. Thus, in using fear, I also perpetuated fear as an integral part of my life. What eventually happened was that by living safely protected within the confines of that fear, I also became controlled by it. As a result, I became increasingly restless, angry, depressed, and felt that I had no life of my own. I saw only death in the future. Underneath it all, however, I was being pushed into alignment with something new by my ancient instinctual spirit self, and yes, a death of sorts, but only a death of that which was not mine to carry. I was being urged into taking a shamanic journey of recapitulation.

In recapitulation we are invited by our ancient instinctual selves to face our fears. As the process of recapitulation naturally unfolds our unconscious opens its doors, kept so tightly locked by our fears, and allows us to see just what it was that taught us those debilitating fears in the first place. In recapitulation we also reunite with our ancient instinct, understanding how it has worked to protect us in the past and how it can be brought out into a more fully integrated new life. Sometimes there may be a fine line between what is instinctual fear and what is learned fear, but that’s okay if we understand that we use them both when necessary, and if we can accept that there is always some aspect of ourselves that will come forth to protect us when we most need it.

In recapitulation we learn to distinguish between fears placed on us by others, fears learned through our experiences, and innate fears, but really what we learn is that our fears have controlled us, no matter where they came from. We gain a clearer understanding of our true inner desires to live differently. We more clearly hear the calls of our ancient spirit self, wishing that we could do and experience life from a different perspective.

And, as we recapitulate, we learn how we used to do things and we learn that we can choose to do things differently. We can change our habits and behaviors for no other reason than that it is good for us to do so. When we dare ourselves to move beyond the old fears we allow the true self to more fully live, confident that we have all we need inside us, instinct and nature more finely tuned to guide us now away from the old and into the new.

Our old dog lies at my feet as I write this blog, sighing occasionally, snoring, her fears at rest for the moment; and that is how our fears work. We can send them away, go about our usual activities, sleep them off, but that is only a temporary reprieve from the demands of the fearful self. Soon enough we have to get up again and face that self that won’t let us live from the ancient heart-centered spirit, that only tells us to live by the predilections of a society that tells us we must fear everything. We know those trappings of fear so well. We may even be bored with them, bored with how they control us, keep us caught doing the same things over and over again, keep us from running out the door and leaping into life, to roll around in the energy of new experiences. If we are as timid as our old dog, our lives become pretty limited, routine and boring, as if we were 119 years old.

Personally, I elected a long time ago to go over to another life, even before this one was over. I elected to err on the side of heart-inspired energy, to grab onto what I always knew lay just beyond this world. I just had to put myself in alignment with it, to see beyond the fear and face a different life, a heart-centered life. That was really what I did during my recapitulation. I put myself in alignment with the teachings of my own heart and I will not ever leave it again.

Of course, I have to face the choices I made. As I go out into the world and meet people who once knew me in a certain way, I have to face the fear that immediately arises like a shield between us when I tell them that I took a shamanic journey and that I am in a new world now. “Literally,” I say, “I am literally living in a different world, and I love it!” There is fear in their eyes when I say this, and that is a fear that I come up against quite often these days, and it is not fear of something harmful, but fear of something beautiful! Why are we so afraid of that which is so good for us, naturally so, our ancient heart-centered intent?

So, perhaps this blog may help in understanding the difference between fear and fear, between true instinctual fear and learned fear, between electing fear and electing something beyond fear. Life is really a good roll in the snow; it really is beautiful. I encourage everyone to reach for the inspiration of the ancient heart-centered self and find out!

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

Thanks for reading! Sending you all love and good wishes,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

#745 Navigating Fear

February 7, 2011 Jan Leave a comment

Written by Jan Ketchel and including a channeled message from Jeanne Ketchel.

Over the past three Mondays, we have been exploring different means of navigating through life. Personally, I have found that the biggest block to everything is fear. Generally, I find myself coming up against fears that I do not even recognize as fears, though I may know the comforting presence of them, as they have most likely always been in my life, though often unacknowledged as such. When we begin to look more closely at ourselves, at the judgments and declarations we utter, at the choices and inner resolutions we so proudly attain and adhere to, when we dare ourselves to stay more present in the moment and equally more innerly attuned, we may be able to describe everything that gets in our way as a fear.

Why do I continually have the same kind of reaction to a certain situation, person, or challenge? Why do I always get myself into the same kind of relationships? Why do I find so-and-so such a disturbing presence? Why am I so reluctant to change? Why am I so determined to control every situation in my life? Why is it so hard to flow with what life presents? What is it that keeps me from fully expressing my feelings? Why can’t I fully attain my potential, my dreams, a good relationship, a calm place, etc.? What is wrong with me? We might ask all of these questions at some time in our lives.

Before I began my recapitulation journey I used to constantly ask myself: What is wrong with me? It was an inner mantra—incessantly present background chatter that I could not dismiss. I knew that something was wrong at my core and that it held me firmly in its grip. Although I barged ahead into life, I still always came up against that hard stone of truth. As I began my recapitulation, taking a shamanic journey into the tangled and deeply confused self, the first thing I confronted was that hard stone of truth. And when I stood in front of it and faced it squarely and asked it what it was, it revealed itself for the first time, very clearly. And I could not deny the truth of it: I was afraid of everything. I carried this stone of truth always with me, this fear of everything, yet I was also successful in pushing it far enough down inside me that I could engage in life, becoming a fully functioning adult, with a career, a family, and a rich creative life.

Before my recapitulation, this struggling self, pushing this heavy stone around, fluctuated between dealing with the pain of carrying this stone, the inner spirit self unable to fully emerge, with the outer ego self needing to be fully in the world, but also greatly compromised. They often battled against each other, each seeking to rule. This bipolar self, that Chuck so beautifully describes in his Reality blog, often raged in separate corners, fighting fiercely against each other, as is fully appropriate. As we grow out of childhood and enter the world of everyday reality the ego self must take over. But what happens to the spirit self? The spirit self sits behind that stone of truth, holding the secrets of existence and of many other realities, waiting for opportunities to take us there.

Eventually, hopefully, we get to a place in life where the ego self has done enough for us and we can let it take a backseat and allow the things of the spirit to more strongly be heard. But what holds us from accessing and more fully allowing those other more innerly desires of the spirit self to fully live?

First, the ego, long used to holding the seat of power stands in the way with its greatest weapon always drawn: all of our fears. For it has used them so well to navigate life, why would it cease to use them? If we can face and acknowledge that we are truly afraid of everything, we can begin to take a true recapitulation journey. As I began to face my fears and take that recapitulation journey I learned that it meant shattering everything that I had so far lived by, everything the ego had worked so hard to establish and rule by. And I discovered that the gas that the ego, as our vehicle in life, runs on, most of the time is fear. It fuels everything from inflation to deflation, high self-esteem to low self-esteem, our driven self and our depressed self. Fear truly is the hard stone that lies at our core and directs how we live our lives.

Today, I ask Jeanne to join us and give us some pointers on how to deal with our fears. For even if we have done a good job of recapitulating, even if we have spent years in therapy, in healing activities, in seeking to evolve, we cannot get away from the reality of fear. It is in us always. It will always arise, and does so every day of our lives. Think about it.

So, Jeanne, what advice do you offer us today, as we seek to identify, own, and go beyond our fears?

My Dear Ones: FEAR is but a tool to use for growth. FEAR can take one into life and it can take one out of life. FEAR can aid one in aligning with spirit intent and it can also become an ally in promoting the intent of the ego. FEAR is both an accomplice and a teacher.

Do not look on fear as negative. It is not a detrimental aspect of self, but the true teaching self. It is the spirit self and the ego self in alignment, gathered together in proposing the work that must be done.

As I channel, I see a vision of the two selves on either side of a huge boulder or ancient stone monolith, which is speaking to them (sort of like that opening scene from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey) and I hear this: FEAR=Face Everything And Recapitulate!

Yes, that is what fear does—it speaks its truths. But who is ready to hear them and who is not? It does not matter really, for it does not ever stop talking. As Jan mentions, it chatters incessantly throughout life, proposing and imposing thoughts, speaking out of place, sending annoying messages through brain, body, and energy. Fear is always present.

So now that we can perhaps accept that idea, that it is always present and here to teach us, what comes next?

The next step, after acknowledging its grand presence, is to pay attention to it. Ask it what it is trying to tell you. What does it mean to show you? Where is it taking you today? What does it want you to confront? What does it ask you to barge through? What door is it opening? What is it really trying to show you?

Once fear arises and is confronted, it literally seems to disappear, at least until it arises again. But was it really there to begin with? Is it a solid object? Can you touch it with your hands or was it just a figment of your imagination? Fear exists and yet it does not. Fear is present at all times, and yet it is hardly there at all. It is present in the duality of self, representing the ego self who must play out what fear presents to it and it is also the spirit self who knows that, as an enigma, it is most necessary to encounter and understand.

Life is really very simple, My Dears. It is a constant journey of confronting the inner fears. These fears may loom large and imposing, projected in outer encounters, but when you come down to it, they do not really exist. As soon as you barge through them they evaporate, they shatter into nothing more than mental blocks, stones of awareness that, when shattered, give you a boost in energy.

Look thus on your fears as envelopes of energy waiting to be released—pockets of fear are pockets of vital life force. Your job, as a student of life, is to gather your energy. Your tests are to conquer your fears. And your fears are always with you. In one form or another, your challenges will appear totally encased in fears that must be confronted and burst apart, so that you may capture the energy they have been holding for you.

Don’t you feel exhilaration when you challenge yourself to confront your fear and succeed in decimating its power over you? This is how you learn to navigate life; by decimating your fears you grow and evolve, but you also gain energy.

And what happens if we refuse again and again to face and burst through our fears, Jeanne?

In the long run, refusal to meet fear means that fear will take over. That stone you speak of, Jan, will grow larger, until you are totally encased in the hard boulder of it, until you have no more energy. You will live a life unfulfilled, yet still be confronted by your fears. You will constantly go to battle for the energies of your fears, but your own evolution will have been compromised, for the time-being declared unprepared for, unready for. When you are ready you will know what to do. But until then the burden of your fears will grow.

You see, My Dears, it’s necessary to find the means of gaining access to your personal energy. You all have enough to get you where you are going to evolve. You just have to find the way to access it and then use it to gain more.

As you elect to turn your life in a different direction, and face your fears, you will find that some of those fears are very apparent, easily identifiable, known entities and longtime partners in your life. They may be easily burst through as well, but then other fears, not so easily identifiable as such, will come into the game of life. And these are the ones, disguised in many forms, that will really teach you what it means to evolve, to be balanced individuals, and to navigate life with spirit-intent, living in the form of flesh and ego, mind and spirit-thought combined.

Find out who you truly are by facing those fears. It really is the only thing that stands in your way. Your path may not be that clear to you, but I can guarantee that your fears are!

Do you have a last thing to say on this subject today, Jeanne?

Oh yes, don’t forget to love yourself for the fears you bear, and love your fears for guiding you through life, for they are your fuel. They carry the energy you need to truly evolve. They are you, leading you ever deeper to the core of self, the energy self. They may manifest in your life and in your body, but they are your energy self. Find your way to them and gather from them the knowledge they hold. Your fears are your power! You see?