I don’t often encounter depressed feelings, but by Monday of this past week I was laden with the weight of the futility of the national political civil war. I’d been in the world too long; I needed to find my way home.
Whenever I connect to the moment, that final moment of life in the body, feeling my energy body separate and lift for the last time from my physical body, I am treated to such a different perspective. All that seemed so important, worth fighting for but a moment ago, becomes actually light and even humorous. The relativity, the transitoriness of all that was once held so dear, melts into a glow of loving compassion. All that matters really, for all of us, is the infinite journey and what comes next.
As I struggled Monday to find my way home, to the perspective of this final moment, I turned to my old trusty friend, the I Ching, for counsel. The I Ching tells me I’ve been treading on the tail of the tiger. Fortunately, this tiger is so caught off guard; it bites not and heads for the hills!
Path of Heart
The tiger symbolizes wild, intractable people—the kind I wrote about in last week’s blog, those currently energized with evil energy. I broke my vow of detachment and ventured into that energy field. It didn’t bite back, but its negativity caught me unaware. It’s a world of ego gamesmanship, a world that separates me from my spirit. Without my spirit, even for a day, I feel like I could die! I have no interest in dying, but in my innocence I strayed. This, according to the I Ching, is not correct conduct: walking can be carefree, but ought not be naive.
The I Ching suggests I return to the calm and level way of the lonely sage. “He remains withdrawn from the bustle of life, seeks nothing, asks nothing of anyone, and is not dazzled by enticing goals.” —Wilhelm translation.
This is coming home: the egoless clarity of the moment of death. Finally, I am counseled to look where I walk, to look into what will be favorable and turn toward it to find great fortune. In essence, to turn toward what makes me happy, for that is the right path. For me, this is alignment with that final moment of separation: a path of heart, the warrior’s path, a being who is going to die.
When it comes to finding the way back home, turn toward that which truly makes you happy. Here you will find your path, a path of heart; follow your bliss.
From home,
Chuck
Back in 1969 Blind Faith’s Can’t Find My Way Home resonated with my spirit. Check out this early video and then in 2007 Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton got together and sang it again.
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I sit on my meditation pillow and do the sweeping breath; exhaling, emptying of breath while turning my head to the right, breathing in while moving my head to the left, and then holding my breath while I sweep my head back to the right again. I do this over and over again, sweeping back and forth in an effort to recapture the dream I had last night. I have most of it, but there are a few details that I want clarified. The shamanic sweeping breath, the recapitulation breath, works like EMDR to capture experiences, dream and otherwise.
In my dream I am planting a garden. Chuck is with me. We have prepared everything according to what we feel is good for the earth, for the soil, imbuing everything with our intent to do it right so that everything we plant will feel welcomed and loved and provide us with sustenance and nurturance in return. Now it is time to put the seeds into the ground. I am standing with my cupped hands full of seeds. I am looking at them intently, knowing that I have done everything to prepare for this moment, but still I am aware that something is missing.
Ethereal Light
Chuck is standing next to me, also looking at the seeds in my hands, both of us trying to figure out what it is we have forgotten. Suddenly there is a loud crack and the pile of seeds is emblazoned with energy. They glow with a vibrant ethereal light and then I know that this is what is missing, the energy of Mother Nature beyond what we personally could intend. At the same time I am startled awake, because the loud crack was, in reality, a powerful jolt of lightning and thunder that rumbles on and on, Mother Nature, the earth reminding us of her power.
“It sounds like an earthquake shaking the earth apart,” Chuck said, as we lay awake listening to its insistent rumblings, the significance of this statement highlighting the truth of what has been happening lately in Japan and other parts of the world. As we fell back to sleep I thought about writing the dream down so I didn’t lose it, but I chose instead to replay it over and over again in my mind so I could more readily remember it in the morning. Alas there was something missing when I woke up too, just as I knew there was something missing as I stared at the seeds in my hands during the dream experience itself.
Doing the sweeping breath helps clarify the intent of the dream, which I am aware, is teaching me something important. What I remember now is that at the moment of the crack of thunder I was aware that I was as the tiny seeds in my hands, that no matter what I personally did it was the energy of Mother Nature, in all of us, that would determine the outcome of my garden. It is important to prepare for life, for planting, making preparations according to what is in alignment with what is right, but it is hubris on our part to think that we can control anything. It is important to be an active participant in life, but the truth is that the energy of life, of nature, is unstoppable.
This is what I also understood as I lay in the dark listening to the thunder rolling and cracking open the silence of the night. In all that I have been writing about lately—pointing out the decisions that we have all taken and that we are all responsible for, whether we agree with them or not—in the end, the one who will determine our fate will be the Earth itself. Mother Nature holds the real power.
We are but seeds scattered upon the soil, we fall were we fall. We must each one of us find our way with where we have landed in this life. Some of us live in the richest country in the world, in a material sense. Some live in a country with a belief in the richness of Mother Nature, Pachamama, as I mentioned in a note yesterday regarding Brazil’s law of equality, granting nature and all living things equal status with humanity. How is it possible that such diverse and drastically different attitudes exist? On the one hand our own country of America continues making decisions to ravage and destroy the earth in an effort to uphold our standard of living, while another country seeks to return to ancient alignment with the earth. The truth is that Brazil too has ravaged the earth, but now seeks to return to ancient alignment and identity with nature. Something powerful is being expressed in turning to this other truth that lies at the heart of our human presence upon this earth.
As in my dream, something is asking us to pause now and question what we have done. We are at a crucial moment in our time, but synchronistically in the time of all living things. We must all ask what is missing. What is it that we have not done to prepare, what is not right here? What have we forgotten?
Mother Nature has the answers. As we see happening in Japan, in Arizona where fracking for natural gas has unleashed earthquakes deep inside the earth, in the tragic truths of gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, mother nature is responding, even as she did in the night as I dreamed. I take the synchronicity of that loud crack of thunder at the moment I was dreaming very seriously. I also see its synchronicity in all that I have been reading and writing about recently, in the wake of national and international events and discussions regarding how we all treat the earth.
Even as I was wondering in my dream what was missing from my own little effort to do something earth-sustaining, taking personal responsibility for growing some of my own food, nature herself spoke loudly and clearly, reminding me of her powerful presence in my life and in all life as well. She is life and she has something to say. We all need to listen.
I don’t mean to be preachy nor do I wish to impose my personal beliefs. I think we must all come to what feels right for us personally, but at the same time I do strongly feel that it would be amiss to not point out the synchronicities all around us. I truly believe that Pachamama must be treated with respect and awe—not simply granted equality with humankind, though this is a good start—because she is far more powerful than we are. This is the truth I learned in my dream.
I am just one little seed, sending you all love and good wishes.
Jan
If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below. And don’t forget to check out our facebook page at: Riverwalker Press on facebook where we post comments, photos, and quotes.
“We live in a vastly complex society which has been able to provide us with a multitude of material things, and this is good, but people are beginning to suspect that we have paid a high spiritual price for our plenty. Each person would like to feel that he is an entity, a separate individual capable of independent existence, and this is hard to believe when everything that we eat, wear, live in, drive, use or handle has required the cooperative effort of literally millions of people to produce, process, transport, and, eventually, distribute to our hands. Man simply must feel that he is more than a mere mechanical part in this intricately interdependent industrial system. We enjoy the comfort and plenty which this highly organized production and distribution has brought us, but don’t we sometimes feel that we are living a secondhand sort of existence, and that we are in danger of losing all contact with the origins of life and the nature which nourishes it?” –From Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons, copyright 1962
Written by Jan Ketchel with a channeled message from Jeanne Ketchel.
Today I ask Jeanne for guidance for all of humanity as we continue to face an escalating world crisis on so many levels. How can we stay connected to our spiritual endeavors in such times of crisis?
Here is what Jeanne advises:
Do not forget that you are one part of a whole and, as the whole goes, so goes each part. Use this analogy to aid you in change. If you are each responsible, if you each affect the whole, so are you equally responsible for the outcome.
Humanity now faces a new opportunity for change. A door hangs open, waiting for mankind to step through it and into the light of awareness, into the light of oneness, and into the light of truth and knowledge of interconnectedness. Why even hesitate? It is the true path to not only change but also to evolutionary steps that will impact the planet and every living thing upon it.
Are not living things more important than that which many consider the must-haves? Are not you and yours more important than the desires of the greedy few? I cannot stress enough that this is so, but I also stress that though you may not be one of the greedy few so are you the same as them. This truth must be accepted before real change can happen. You are all the same.
The greedy few, in turn, must accept that they are as poor as the field mice with only a burrow to call home. Man is not superior; wealth does not make one better; religions do not may you holier or more spiritual; and material things do not make you safer, for all are one. You are all the same.
You share the planet and the energy of life with all manner of humankind and animal kind. This is the first truth that must be accepted, studied, and found to be of guidance. For only in knowing how life truly survives upon that earth may you face change armed with helpful knowledge. I have said this before, and I say it again: Study nature to learn how to become one with nature.
I do not ask you to give up your creature comforts, but I do ask that you extend your intent to change beyond the personal. Even while you work on changing the self by aligning the self with the truth of nature, by observing and respecting all aspects of life and death, of birth and decline, of change and transformation in action all around you, so do I also ask that you set the intent to accept your place in the natural process of things.
Contemplate right action...
Think not superior but same energy.
Think not desire and want, but observe nature closely and use what is readily provided and available.
Watch for signs.
Notice your own inner energy telling you what to do and what not to do.
Use your inner dialogue to change how you think, act, and use your time upon that earth.
There is no doubt that this is a crucial time upon that Earth. Ask the self to do what is right at all times. Begin with this first big step by questioning the self at all times: Is it right that I do this or that? How will it affect my energy and how will my decisions affect the world? Yes, you must all begin to think globally now.
How do you personally affect the planet you live on? How do you affect your own energy by the personal decisions you make? Ask these questions and study your own body, mind and spirit for the answers.
If you are agitated the planet is agitated.
If you are calm the planet is calm.
If you are at peace the planet is at peace.
Find your personal alignment with nature and then make your decisions for how to live and know then how to change as well. And remember: Change is in action. Seek right action.
Thank you to Jeanne for this lesson today.
Most humbly contemplative,
Jan
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