On my father’s eightieth birthday, as we sat around the crowded dinner table, I posed a question.
“Dad,” I said, “you’ve lived a long life, reached this ripe old age of eighty. Do you have any words of wisdom to impart to all of us on this momentous occasion?”
My father looked at me and then glanced around the table at the rest of the family, everyone wondering just what he might say to such a question. His gaze turned to the table laden with food and he simply said: “Pass the butter.”
Laughter erupted, but that was all he said. He didn’t follow it up with a single word and we were left to wonder. Is that really what it’s all about? Pass the butter? Was he telling us that his opinion didn’t matter or that he just didn’t have anything to say about life? Was he suggesting that nothing really matters in the end, that the only things that matter are what comes next? Was he implying that my question was too much to respond to, too impertinent to spring on him like that?
My father was not an outwardly expressive man, kept his thoughts private for the most part, though I always suspected he had a thoughtful, rich inner life, as I expect everyone does. At one time in my youth I had admonished him to quit wasting his imagination on fears and put it to creative outpourings, for I saw, at an early age, how fear consumed him. I knew that in his youth he had been a poet with aspirations of becoming a writer, but those dreams got interrupted, usurped by duties of marriage and family.
As I experienced my father turning from my question that evening at the dinner table, I felt not only a pang of rejection, but, by far, a deeper sense of dismay, for I could not fathom that someone could have lived so long and not been able to speak from the deepness of his heart to his own family. At the time, I was deep into my recapitulation, investigating myself in a most thorough manner, constantly asking myself challenging questions and demanding that I find the answers within. I was learning to trust my heart, turning to my inner self for the answers I sought, and thus I could not imagine that he had not, at some time, done the same. For, as I said, I expected everyone to have a rich inner life. But now I know that not everyone chooses to explore the inner world of the deeper self in quite the same way and beyond that, that many roads lead to a path of heart.
I will turn sixty this year, and I hope that if my children ask me to impart some words of wisdom that I will be as succinct as my father, that perhaps I will be able to wrap it all up in a nutshell and say, this is what life is really all about: Pass the butter. For I think my father’s answer says it all.
He was really saying, without self-importance, without attachment, without needing to uphold anything: This is how I do life, how are you choosing to live your life? And indeed, that is a most private endeavor. Can I be as detached as my father and fully own my own journey, and without judgment let others live the life they choose?
From my father, I have learned that life is not about making a point or being right, or having the answers. Life is really just about choosing how you want to live and then doing it to the fullest. I know that my father lived his life according to his own values, that he made choices in alignment with what he felt was right. He was extremely honest, hard working, dedicated to serving others less fortunate, though he himself was not well off by any means. I know that in his own way he lived every day from a deeply caring place and that he gave without asking for anything in return, only that justice be served, that right be done, knowing that everyone matters. A man of few words, he expressed his inner life in his everyday actions, traveling a path of heart, giving wherever he met resonance in the world.
So, what’s it all about? I fully agree with my father. Life is just about choosing how to live and then living that life to the fullest, in whatever way is right for you.
Here is this week’s channeled message from Jeanne and our guides in Infinity:
Time is now and time is all time; time is eternity. Keep that in mind as you go about your day and set your intentions. Keep always in mind that life upon the earth is brief in the scheme of things, a mere moment, while at the same time you are all eternal beings on eternal journeys. Each part of your eternal journey is significant, each day upon that earth meaningful, each moment part of your greater potential.
Do I notice the treasures in my life?
Do you miss what you seek? Turn around and find it ready and waiting. Do not look too hard, but be open and accepting. Notice how things come to you. Do not overstudy their appearances, but begin to readily accept the magic in your lives as perfectly natural and acceptable.
Ask for what you need and wait for it to come. Set your intention to change and be open and considerate while you wait. Intend to be good in the way of all goodness, to be kind in the way of all kindness, to be loving in the way of all love. By this I mean, be open to the flow of universal love, kindness, and goodness and it will greet you in return. Accept it as it comes to you and then release it so that it flows onward. There is always enough to aid you and enough to go around.
Accept that you are all beings capable of channeling energy and learning the laws of the universe. Become more aware of your own environment to begin with. In pursuit of your understanding of how things work on an energetic level, simply begin by looking around you. Begin to notice that what you seek is right there within your grasp.
Perhaps you have been looking too hard, or not at all. Perhaps you are turning in the wrong direction or blocked by some inner fear. Perhaps you are too sleepy or have little energy, swept up in the mundane and the minutia of your daily lives. Ask the self to perk up and notice what is going on in the world outside of you, even a little bit each day. In this way, discover how your questions get answered, your intentions unfold, and your needs get met.
Perhaps a new perspective might help!
Watch what you ask for, for you will get what you propose. If you are fed up with things beings so bad and you cannot stand your situation any longer, then avoid negative thoughts and expectations. Change your thoughts, change your outlook, and change your expectations to positive ones in order to shift awareness to a new level of living. Take a new approach. Beginning today, allow the positive energy of change to support you in your endeavors to lead a new and better life.
All sentient beings are guided and protected, but also presented with the lessons they most need to gain sure footing and greater awareness of the energy that is available to lead them further on their eternal journeys of discovery.
Looking for something? You might suddenly notice that it’s standing right behind you, that it’s been there for the longest time, just waiting for you to turn around and see it!
Thank you to Jeanne and Infinity for another message of guidance. Most humbly channeled and passed on by Jan Ketchel.
It takes decades to climb the many stepping stones to full sexual maturity. Great effort is required. Aging without effort guarantees only old age. Deep sexual union may, in fact, be the opus of a lifetime with the failures of the first half of life actually being the necessary preparatory steps for true fulfillment beyond midlife.
Nature's imperative...
Those failures include the fertile years where nature, in a most impersonal way, secretly dominates the sexual drive, masking its demands for recreation in the inappropriate attractions that spellbind us into sexual union. Many of those unions, though they may achieve nature’s aim of procreation, lack compatibility, sustenance and duration.
Nature fully takes advantage of the naiveté of youth to romantically do its bidding. Beyond copulation, nature provides little to support relationship. Yes, it does provide bonding and nesting urges, on an instinctual level, but that doesn’t stop nature’s compulsion; it will not be limited. That’s its survival strategy: quantity of children over quality of relationship. And true commitment, true containment, is hard to submit to in the fertile years. All humans must reckon with this debt to their animal natures, with its exorbitant interest toll evident in relationship casualties. If we truly grasped the power of nature to commandeer even our minds during the fertile years, we wouldn’t take so personally our failures. We didn’t stand a chance against nature’s imperative.
Coexistent with nature’s biological dominance in the fertile years is the ego’s growing control over sexual life. These include encounters with adequacy, self-esteem, performance, power, and the ability to connect.
Can I do it?
Some of the ego challenges that men may encounter as they attempt to firmly establish their potency and power are questions such as:
Am I attractive enough?
Am I virile enough?
Am I worthy of this person?
Can I approach and hold my own in interaction?
Do I know how to seduce?
Is my penis adequate, large enough?
Can it get the job done?
How do I turn her on, what’s the best method?
What’s the deal with oral sex? Can I handle it?
How are you supposed to do it?
Where’s the clitoris?
Can I handle a real life encounter?
Can I stop shaking?
Can I get an erection?
Can I maintain an erection?
Can I handle the responsiveness of her body?
Will I ejaculate too soon?
How will I know if she’s satisfied?
Can I share my fantasies?
How did I measure up?
Why doesn’t she ever approach me?
How can I get more?
Am I sexy enough?
Women are challenged by many of the same ego and self-esteem questions, but their are others specifically female related, such as:
Am I pretty enough?
Am I smart enough?
Am I desirable enough?
Do I have an attractive body?
Are my breasts too little, too big?
Do I smell good?
Does he really like me?
Can I tell him my dreams?
Will it hurt?
Where is my clitoris?
Will I orgasm?
How do I tell him he’s not doing it right without hurting his feelings?
Is this love?
Will he come back or is this just a one time thing?
What if I just want to cuddle, will he be okay with that?
What if he comes first?
Do I have to fake an orgasm so his ego isn’t hurt?
How do I stop him, say no, if it doesn’t feel right?
Why do we have to do it so often?
What if I get pregnant?
These questions and thousands more, including a readiness and willingness to commit, pervade men’s and women’s thoughts during the fertile years. Concerns are largely self-centered, only marginally relational. True readiness to be with, take in, and merge with another person, in mature union, transcends the ego’s preoccupations during the fertile years.
Biological aims and ego insecurities dominate the fertile years and must be experienced and burned through to prepare the ground for the depth of spiritual union inherent in sexual maturity at midlife and beyond. Midlife crisis is actually the spirit’s call to recapitulate and complete the learnings of the first half of life’s lessons to prepare for deep union in later years, what the alchemists called: conjunctio.
A major component of recapitulation is reliving our complete sexual history, facing the full truth, releasing the myths as well as the myriad of feelings combusted and stored around all sexual encounters. In recapitulation, we retrieve our freed energy; we enter our bodies deeply; we accompany the free flow of libido with calm presence and openness, as we prepare for union without barrier.
Recapitulation itself is an arduous process. As we climb the stepping stones to full maturity we learn that it takes time, patience, and a deep yearning for, and commitment to, the truth and fulfillment of this life. During recapitulation, ego issues and traumatic underpinnings that once froze the free flow of sexual energy are discovered for what they truly are, dismantled and released. Recapitulation is conjunctio within the self, as energy previously separated is reclaimed and merged into a unified whole within the self. From this recapitulated place of wholeness, extraverted conjunctio, matured sexuality, is possible with an “other.” If the residual sexual issues from the fertile years are not resolved through recapitulation, these issues will be carried forward, interfering with conjunctio, both within and without.
Ecstatic union
After recapitulation, the physical changes of midlife, and beyond, matter little. With ego relativized through recapitulation, full spiritual, sexual union—at the deepest energetic level—is completely possible! After recapitulation conjunctio is no longer thwarted by such issues as body image or mechanics, for no physical limitations or ego limitations can stop true sexual, energetic union. There simply are no limitations! Two fingers alone can touch in ecstatic orgasmic union!
For those still in the midst of the necessary challenges of the fertile years, stay patient. Full sexual maturity awaits if you allow yourself to have your own necessary experiences and acquiesce to recapitulation when it beckons. For those with limited or deeply compromised sexual experience during the fertile years, recapitulation provides the necessary process of integration of self that will lead to openness to union in later years, when true union is really possible, offering the ability to fully actualize the sexually mature self, in true relationship!
The full realization of sexual maturity ultimately includes the biological, ego, and energetic or spiritual dimensions of our beings. It’s far more than nature just taking its course. It requires us, as conscious beings, to evolve as individuals to really meet each other.
The wrens are back and so we know that the weather will now be milder. They’ve moved into one of the bluebird boxes, crammed it full of sticks and straw, and wake us each morning with their noisy, boisterous chatter, so loud for such tiny birds. The other bluebird box has been occupied by a pair of bluebirds for several weeks now. They came in March and we watched them flit about checking where to nest for quite a while before they decided on the box furthest from our deck. It’s an annual event around here, waiting to see who will occupy which nesting box.
The predators will come...
The robins have also returned in force. Though we can’t be sure, it appears that the same robins are building nests in the same areas again. I am fascinated by their ability to forget what transpired in the years before. The robin family that got devastated by a snake creeping up the small ornamental maple and snatching all but one of the fledglings has moved back into the same tree. Go figure!
Another set of robins made a nest under the deck last year and have done so again, in spite of the fact that they were quite upset at our backyard activities and spent the greater part of the summer contending with us humans. This year they have moved even closer to the backdoor and every time it’s opened the mother flies off the nest in a screaming panic. We had watched the nest building along the main beam there for a few weeks as several decoy nests appeared before the final one was completed.
We’ve noticed how birds never fly directly to their nests but have a way of deflecting attention by taking circuitous routes, but once they set up their flight path they never vary. Go figure that one as well! It’s not that hard to find their nests at all.
On the other hand, I am so grateful for nature trusting us by repeatedly coming to our yard. We have made it comfortable and inviting, nothing is discouraged or turned away, everything is acceptable, that’s just the way it is—Oh, except for the poison ivy! But overall, it’s been gratifying to have front row seats to the unfolding of life, to watch the comings and goings, receiving valuable lessons on a daily basis.
Habits is one of the lessons that comes to mind as I watch these annual nest buildings. Even nature has habits and behaviors as potentially harmful as we humans do, so I don’t feel so bad. Picking the same spot to nest year after year, in spite of what has come before, suggests that all of life has the same tendency to forget, to stay with the known, to just do what generations have done in spite of the known risks. We humans do the same.
As I watch the birds reacting to imminent danger, I find myself appreciating their immediate response, often a shriek or cry and then nervous fear, just like us. Flying about in a panic before finally deciding to attack is quite often the case, seeking to deflect attention from the nest by creating a fuss, but once the predator has its eyes on the nest no amount of fuss will draw it away. The tender young are more inviting than the distraction of a fight with the parents. A predator will do what it can in order to get what it wants, just like us.
Are the birds really that ignorant, forgetful, self-deceptive? Are we? Yup, I think so. Along the lines of making changes in our own lives, we too must contend with the forces of nature, both inside and outside of us. As we seek to shift ourselves out of our usual patterns of behavior and attempt to do something really different and evolutionary, we find that our foes are often as formidable as the predator coming to steal from the robin’s nest. Such a foe is not easily distracted.
Nature, at least nature in my back yard, shows me each year that it has a plan and it sticks to the plan, no matter what. It has enough energy that it can afford to lose countless chicks and whatever else to the predators that will naturally come seeking sustenance and it will continue to produce life in the same manner—no matter what. It goes on doing what it has been doing for eons. We humans, however, have something else in us that makes us stop and look at ourselves, our habits, our tendencies. We have something that makes us question our behaviors, something that says, “hey, stop that, do it differently,” and this is what gets us in trouble, but what also evolves us.
Nature in balance...
Nature evolves slowly, very slowly. Man evolves quickly, very quickly by comparison. As I write this, I look out the window and see the pesky squirrel digging up yet more of the peas I have planted. I am guilty of habitually doing what I see the birds doing and the squirrel predator has obviously been watching me as closely as I watch the birds. Last year I was quite successful in getting my peas planted undetected and we had a good crop. This year I have been planting and planting only to discover, each morning, that something has been digging up the nice plump pea seeds and leaving deep holes in the soil. I have suspected a squirrel and yet I have just gone on planting, thinking that the squirrel will forget about my peas after a while. But today I see that there is no way that squirrel will forget, for it is nature doing what nature does best, returning and doing the same thing over and over and over again. I guess that bodes well for nature, but it does not bode well for my pea crop this year!
Rather than fighting nature, I’m letting the squirrels have the peas. I’ll settle for other crops that are coming in nicely, planted a little earlier because of the warm spring. It looks like I will have enough food from my garden this year. I can share some things with nature because I just don’t need more than I can consume. I don’t need abundance; I just need enough.
In the meantime, I ponder my own evolution. Am I really doing anything different? Am I just another creature of nature and habit? Do the birds and squirrels have an inner world as rich as my own? Are we humans really all that unique? In the end we are all of us—birds, squirrels, humans—just different forms of energy, inhabiting this world for a time, but I am intent on maintaining my awareness beyond this world, and so I remain alert to what is around me, aware of the passage of time and the seasons, habits and processes, learning what I can.
The Shamans and the Buddhists suggest that we use our time to hone our awareness, using both our waking time and our dreaming time to prepare for our evolution from this life, so that we can learn to stay awake when we die and not miss a thing. We are all beings who are going to die, but in the meantime we are also all beings who are offered the opportunity to truly live and grow our awareness. How we elect to do that is extremely personal and it can take us a long time, the natural time it takes for us to reach a level of awareness that life is more than just what meets the eye.
There will always come a time when we have to make a decision. Do I return to the same place and do the same thing all over again, knowing full well the consequences of my actions, or do I do it differently? As humans we can change any time we want, simply by doing so; by choice and will and patient practice we can change. Change takes action and acquiescence, acceptance and daring, letting go of something while embracing something new. There is always a give and take. Sometimes we might think we are losing something precious but we discover, eventually, that we have gained something even more precious, but it’s only in taking action that we will discover this.
During this time of year, the pagan feast of Beltane—of nature’s passing from one time of year into another, of birth and rebirth—is celebrated, but in reality we have the opportunity to rebirth ourselves into new life at all times. It’s pretty daring to be that way, to confront both the self and the world, asking for new life.
Like the foxes...just passing through...
Although Jeanne and Infinity, in Monday’s channeled message, suggested that the world is far-gone now, I did not feel that meant nature, but only that it meant the world man has created. Nature, as I see every year, will continue doing its thing, just as we will. But, as conscious humans, we have the opportunity to do our thing differently, because in the end it’s our world that is now impacted rather than nature’s world. Perhaps it’s time to admit that we just didn’t get it quite right, to take stock of what we really value and really change now how we live.
Can we live in symbiotic balance with nature, knowing that there will be enough for us? I know that I will survive on what is in my yard, that flowing with nature means that I must stop fighting it and stop taking from it. It means being as simply and straightforwardly natural as the critters in my yard, by giving and taking with full human awareness that I am only passing through.
Just deciding how to live and give, most humbly thankful and grateful for all that I have,
