In every moment there is the opportunity to change, like these blossoms that no longer exist, but new leaves have sprouted… nature is in constant flux… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Here is this week’s message from Jeanne:
There is always room for improvement, for tweaking and perfecting. In all walks of life, in all aspects of life, in all you do, think and perceive there is room for new insight.
Allow the self, over the next few days, to notice just how you repeat yourself, how you go into automatic pilot and without consciousness simply operate as if you were a robot. Robots do not embody spirit. They are mere machines. Is that what you want to be, a mere machine?
Life, in order to be fulfilling, must include goals and goals, in order to be achieved, must involve disciplinary action. Without judgment and self-criticism, but simply because it is time and you are ready, embrace a new disciplinary plan. Set your goals and strive toward them, one step at a time.
Allow the self room to maneuver through the energy that arises each day, not so hard that you can’t flow, because it is in the act of flowing that you will learn what it means to grow and change. If you are too strict there will be no progress, just as there will be no progress if you are too lenient. Inflexibility is just as damaging as overindulgence.
Allow the self to be aware of the energy outside of the self, even as you seek to hone your inner energy, for it is only in compatibility that these two forces—inner and outer—will align and balance. Thus, to be innerly aware is as important as being outerly aware.
Watch how you operate in your own world. Who rules you? Who commands, directs, and charges you with your tasks, judgments, and your ideas of self and other? Who is really in charge? Seek connection with the spirit that resides within and allow it to guide you. This is often easier said than done, but with intent, discipline, and a keen inner awareness you should be able to hone your attention on this inner spirit self over the next few days. Begin there, and then flow with what comes, allowing the self to relax with this inner self. Accept its truths and be open to accepting its guidance. The flow of your life will change as you both release and hone, let go and yet discipline yourself, constantly realigning your intent, innerly and outerly.
Life is an unending flow of moments—of energy and opportunity. You are already in the flow of its offerings. Now it’s time to be in your life fully aware, accepting of what comes to greet you and determined to experience it to the fullest. That’s the challenge.
A rush of energy will follow shortly. Feel it and know that it is the energy of life itself flowing through you. It might feel like too much at once, or not enough, but you will remember it for its truthful presence. It’s up to you to tame it so that it feeds your needs but also so that you remain fully aware, in balanced alignment with it. With your intent set to change, use it to your advantage. You are in charge of how you elect to use it—the flow of the energy of life as it flows through you and everyone upon that earth. Let go of your crutches—in whatever form they are—and let the energy of life in.
Each moment is new and vibrant and available for you to use to your advantage. The choice becomes: Do I grab it and go, shift into new life, or do I have to stay where I am a little bit longer, or even a lot longer? You decide. Then act, take action on your own behalf. Hone your awareness if nothing else.
Change takes proactive energy; that is being in alignment with life and taking action on your own behalf. No one else can do it for you. If you want change, make it happen for yourself. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. What are you waiting for? The energy of life awaits! Feel it flowing through the universe. It is your present and your future, already available to you, already flowing through you. You just have to become aware of this and let it guide you.
Seek compatibility in all you do, in where you go, in who you go with. Compatibility is the key.
What does your Grudge look like? – Art by Jan Ketchel
First, a shout out to a magical being who proposed that the “Raw Deal” be a blog topic, as a personal shift to a “New Deal” takes place. Thank you. You know who you are.
Roosevelt’s New Deal was a radical shift for America, one intended to shift the nation beyond entrenched victimhood into independence. This victim can be subtle and wily, as it can sneak in and bind our energy and take over our view through the character that I call “the Grudge.”
The Grudge is the repository of our accumulated resentments and entitlements, frustrated and fermenting in our chained bodies and spirits. The Grudge casts a negative, gray hue over our moods, thoughts, and interactions with the world. The Grudge gnaws on the raw deal of unmet needs such as betrayal, neglect, and abuse. The Grudge may dominate inwardly in powerlessness, isolation, and depression, or outwardly in open hostility and critical judgment, or both inwardly and outwardly simultaneously.
The Grudge is actually the warehouse for recapitulation. In recapitulation we sift through our accumulated grudge inventories and systematically free our energy for redeployment in a New Deal, beyond the confines of the Raw Deal.
Stalking, in the shamanic world, is learning how to live in any given world. In stalking the Raw Deal, we observe how our attitudes, behaviors and habits construct and uphold what we perceive as an unfair world, at least as we personally experience it. As we stalk the Raw Deal world we live in, we observe ourselves boxed into the corner by fate, circumstance, and choice—beings with clipped wings.
In recapitulation, we identify the building blocks of our raw deal world and follow through to their derivative roots. We discover, through recapitulation, the truths of our victimization; the deep-seated wounds to our innocence that have so restricted our joy and fulfillment. These wounds must be observed and fully felt. Equally, our response to those woundings—our defensive strategies to hide and protect our innocence—must be acknowledged and accepted. Herein lies the heart of the Grudge: the repository of unlived innocence.
The task at hand is to free our lost innocence from the protective hands of the Grudge, free it to come into mainstream life. Often the Grudge will hold on tightly, arguing that it is the job of the world, or those who failed innocence, to acknowledge their mistakes and compensate for lost time, lost life.
Though the Grudge often rightly points to those responsible for the Raw Deal to begin with—those beyond the self—the chance of outer compensation is fairly slim. Fortunately, the adult self that stalks the Raw Deal and elects to undertake a thorough recapitulation, is fully capable of freeing the Grudge, freeing the captive innocent self. Thus empowered, this adult self is then free to live out that innocence to fulfillment in this life. This is the adult self assuming full responsibility for its journey, its life, and whatever challenges infinity might have placed or continues to place before it. This is stalking the New Deal, a victimless life, fully freed from the protective custody of the Grudge, with energy redeployed for truly living.
What kind of mother did you get? – Art by Jan Ketchel
Motherhood seems to be the theme of the week. It all started on Mother’s Day. I decided not to call my mother. It was a deeply considered act on my part. I absolved myself of upholding a tradition that has no meaning for me. This was done not out of spite or resentment, but only because there is nothing to be gained in continuing a tradition for tradition’s sake. It would have been different if I had some attachment to my mother.
I felt no need or obligation to continue playing an old charade. It would have been ingenuine. I have moved on to a new world where old habits and behaviors and meaningless acts are questioned as to value, truth, and importance and dealt with in a compassionate and affectionate manner. And so I allowed myself to have a completely free day. I flowed with the energy, weaving in and out of worlds as the day went on, enjoying every minute of my freedom from old stale duty. I received phone calls myself from my sweet children, but they also know that I have no expectations of them. They don’t have to uphold anything on my account. Our bond however, is real and genuine. In contrast, I have no connection with my own mother. I never did.
I have no memory of my mother as a mother. Any tender mothering she administered was over pretty quickly. After that she became someone I dodged as often as I could and who I dealt with as little as possible. An impeccable petty tyrant, she often loomed as big as the nuns at the Catholic school I went to, as big as the Church itself.
I have distance from that mother now. As I worked through my parental relationships during my recapitulation, there were many things about my parents that I had to confront and consider, but there were also plenty of things about them that I had to own and encounter inside myself as well. I explore this deep inner process in The Edge of the Abyss as I faced the mother—and father—I got and understood how I had become just like them. There was always, however, a part of me that didn’t want to be like them, that struggled to become independent of them and how they lived their lives, to become my own separate being.
I granted myself permission to become a different kind of mother when I had my own children, an openly loving mother. I also granted this new mother to myself as I recapitulated, teaching myself that it’s okay to be expressive and joyous, tender and considerate of myself. I learned how to become my own mother and my own father, a different mother and father from the ones I got, fully present and attentive, connected and available to the evolving being I was. This was how I also learned to love and appreciate the parents I got; how I learned what it meant to have compassion for others.
A different kind of mother… – Art by Jan Ketchel
And so the motherhood theme—perhaps because I rejected the status quo on Sunday, or perhaps because it’s in the energy of the planetary alignment right now—continues to arise. As the week has gone by, I have had to face the motherhood question.
Am I still carrying my mother around inside me? I pose this question to myself as a challenge and I have to be honest: Oh yes! I am not totally free of my mother. It’s not that easy to cast off that which was long ago embedded inside you, especially if it still exists in reality and must constantly be reencountered. I may still have to encounter her inside myself after her passing too, though I work now to free myself of that possibility. I have no intention of dealing with her ghostly enigma. But the truth is that it’s not my mother that I must face. It’s really only the enigma of the mother of my childhood, who’s shadow sometimes falls upon my brave new world. I don’t want her living inside me, in my body or in my thoughts, and so I constantly work at exorcising her tags of energy still embedded in my psyche. I do this not with any hatred, but only because we are done, our work as parent and child was finished long ago. However, the old mother inside me can still draw me into old places. Those times are less and less frequent, but they are still there, waiting for me to lapse. “Don’t leave me,” she pleads, “take me with you!” I notice it especially in my body, in my posture, moments when I feel the weight of that old mother, as if I’m literally carrying her around on my back.
The body is such a bearer of bad habit. It so easily slips into old postures of submission and fear. I notice that I’m not emotionally feeling like my old self when this happens, I remain my new strong self, but some part of me remembers and my muscles slip back so easily into their old molds. I have to constantly be aware of how I sit, walk, and move around in general. I have to constantly readjust myself inside my new body self. “I’m stalking a new self,” I remind myself, as I shrug off the old. “I’m stalking a new me!”
My life in this world has, for the most part, been an introspective one. Deeply introverted, my inner dissociated self was never a stranger, but this body was. I have claimed back my body, but I still have to remain in it. It’s so easy to slip out and go elsewhere. As I worked through my recapitulation, I realized that my greatest challenge in this life is to be fully physically present. I know that now. And so that is the work I do now. On a daily basis I remind myself that I exist in this body. And so, I have to thank my mother for her part in this process of self-discovery. Even though I didn’t call her on Mother’s Day, I am grateful for the mother I got. She has helped me to grow, but it was necessary for me to be totally in my own body, mothering myself as a physical being in a new world, being my own mother on Mother’s Day.
As both a mother and a daughter, I can say that the best Mother’s Day gift anyone can give—or father’s day gift for that matter—is to become totally independent beings all around. Mothers, mother yourselves. Children, mother yourselves. Fathers, father yourselves. Children, father yourselves. Become the parent you never got and love yourselves. In this way, we absolve each other of the hooks and kinks that keep us attached, that keep us all immature adults, that keep us bound by old stale rules that keep us repeating unhealthy dynamics, traditions for tradition’s sake that have no meaning, that keep us big babies.
Intent we keep posted on the fridge… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Traditions must be upheld, it seems, until we no longer need them, until we find ourselves free at last. And so I constantly remind myself that it’s okay to break the rules, to see where I am in my life, how far I’ve really come. Can I pull this off? Is it right and for the right reasons? Just look around and see how many people you know who are already doing it. Are you? Who in your life is daring to break with tradition and not show up at the family gathering? Are they doing it for the right reasons? Not out of resentment, fear, guilt or hatred, but because they’ve truly evolved and moved on? And can we let them go, without resentment too? At other times, it’s vitally important to go beyond personal issues and show up for an occasion, to transcend grudges or disputes and be present for others. Sometimes it’s just important to step into another’s world and flow with what they need. I am, for instance, still very present in my mother’s life. She depends on me. I have deep affection for her, but I need nothing in return.
Just think of those 17-year cicadas waiting for their moment of emergence, their moment of freedom from what their parents did to them! I imagine it feels pretty much like what I felt as I did my recapitulation and came out of the shadow of parental expectation and duty. I had to find my own way in life, in my own way. It’s what we’re all charged with. As you burst through the crust of the old self and feel the sun on your face, for the first time perhaps you realize— like I did, and like those cicadas know—that this is not the end, it’s only the beginning. There is yet another moment of transformation to come: growing your wings. And after that you have to fly! And then where will you go? That next step is always there, just one more step ahead of you.
It’s time to leave the pit and spread new wings of intent, as free mature beings. Imagine the sound that all of us freed human beings would make, our spirits shouting, drowning out the sounds of the cicadas. Now that would be something to hear!
Here is a nice cheerful message from Jeanne today, inviting us to let ourselves enjoy the energy of change. Here is what she says:
What’s your energy like today? – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Today is a good day to take stock of where you are. Contemplate where you are in your lives and how far you have actually come on your journey of change. Be honest with the self in your assessment. Notice your energy level. Have you gained back some of your personal energy as you have worked on the self? Have you let some things go that have drained your energy? Have you learned when it is appropriate to say yes and when to say no? Do you then act on that knowing?
Be kind to the self as you do your personal assessment—don’t be too hard! Accept your truths and resolve to move on with renewed intent. Simply allow the self to be fallible. The honest truth is that you are human and so you will be as human as you need to be. But once you realize this humanness, and once you fully see where you are caught, the next move on your part is to act in a new manner.
That is what must happen now. You must all act in a new manner today. The energy of the universe supports all such acts of change. Your efforts will show immediate results. You will be gifted the energy to continue your evolving journey with new intent, hope, and compassion. New insights will arise to guide you. I suggest that you grab them and go with them. They will take you where you need to go next.
Open your hearts to the self and others, and always remember that Everything Is Possible! Let some of that possibility in today, even if only a bit. It will make your day a lot brighter. I guarantee!
Who is responsible for this death? – Photo by Jan Ketchel
“$8 Million Bail for Kidnapping Suspect” read the New York Times headline on May 9, 2013. Once again the headlines shout out the most aberrant, deviant, chillingly evil of human beings. In this case Ariel Castro, the man accused of kidnapping, raping, chaining and beating three young women for a decade, now exposed and in captivity. A sentiment arises in reaction: Execute him by the cruelest of means, avenge the lost innocence, protect future innocence!
Though I hold no sympathy for the devil, I know this devil is but a symptom of our current human condition, a sign that must be fully read and owned if our species is to advance beyond our current rut. To simply kill the messenger is to fail to comprehend the real message.
I’ve spent the lion’s share of my professional life, almost 35 years, penetrating PTSD, journeying with survivors of abuse to retrieve their lost wings and ultimately fly with sheer abandon, finally freed of their trauma. Consistently, throughout the years, the question presents itself: Why? Why are there predators? Why do brothers rape sisters and brothers? Why do fathers rape daughters and sons, mothers their sons and daughters? Why do uncles rape their nieces and nephews, grandparents their grandchildren? Why do neighbors rape neighbors, men rape women, priests their brethren? The list touches every social construction, every relationship in our world.
The myth of our origin is a crime, our hubris—the Catholics call it original sin—our original decision to evolve on our own terms outside the laws of nature. Humankind decided to take nature and further it in its own way. This was the birth of consciousness, of ego at the control, alienated from its god—nature as it had evolved and run for eons based on what worked best, based on its own laws of balance. Then along came man.
Humankind quickly generated its own rule books to regulate and further itself, leaving nature to the animal world. Humankind developed taboos like incest, and instituted rites of passage to regulate and transform the powerful instincts of sex, hunger, and protection. Eventually religions arose to regulate those instincts. Religions were also charged with regulating and guiding the evolving spirit self, checking the tendency of ego self to proclaim itself a god.
Today, we have a world where religions largely do lip service to uphold the norm and support a social identity. Today, the human race has completely lost its real identity. The human race has forgotten that it is an animal. The human sees itself as a supercomputer, a technical wizard-god, capable of creating its own universe. The human being has long forgotten its animal roots. It has completely underestimated the power of its instinctive core.
For most of us, finding a healthy pathway to the instincts is barred. We human beings are either terrified of the disintegrating impact instincts have upon consciousness, or we have completely lost the ability to feel a deeper connection to those instinctive energies. If those instincts do emerge, there is little to guide and help regulate their flow and integration. At best we have a bunch of rules. Few can talk openly about their passionate needs. They stay hidden in the shadows. We are a species dissociated and in opposition to our instincts. They manifest as the sick and maimed ferocious animals of our dreams—our boxed up, imprisoned, disowned instinctive selves.
Under the guise of “civilization” lies the belief that we are an advanced species, and that we are in superior control. Not so! Our instinctive selves have become the predators that lurk within and without. They are the Ariel Castors, the disowned ones, freed to roam and prey outside of us because we refuse to take seriously the power of our dissociated animal selves. The Ariel Castors among us are not separate from us. They are our disowned instincts driven to deviance by our silence and refusal to speak about our sexual nature.
It’s not the animal that’s the problem. Animals DON’T rape. It’s the failure of the human animal to properly acknowledge and wisely integrate its own instinctive nature. That’s what causes the animal in us to become rabid; neglect and disownment are the culprits. The sexual predator lives in the shadow side of a species that has disowned its animal self.
If we squarely faced the animal within ourselves, we’d have no illusions about the predatory potential all around and inside us. We’d have no illusions about the predatory potential of every human being—including our so civilized selves—to do harm to others.
I do not mean to stir up paranoia—although I would warn to be extremely thoughtful before leaving young children alone with older siblings or relatives or a neighbor. Instinctual energies that have not been properly encountered are prone to be acted out in a deviant way where opportunity arises, most often against the innocent and powerless. Our challenge is to face more squarely the sexual instinct inside the self, inside growing children, inside everyone, not to underestimate its power or impact, but to talk about it, regulate it, normalize it, transform it, warn and protect against its excesses. I’m proposing that it’s time to step up to the truth of the monstrous predicament we have gotten ourselves into by our failure to address the topic of our own instinctive selves, now turned deviant due to neglect, an imbalance caused by a failure to address and take responsibility for all sides of our human nature.
In the case I cited to begin this blog with, that of Ariel Castro, this predator must be held accountable and properly sentenced for the crimes he committed against those young women, but the real message for all of us is not to kill the messenger, but to heed his most alarming message. This is what we have become! To kill the messenger is a micro management solution to a macro problem. Let’s get to the broader view of an endangered species that has lost its way. It’s a problem that effects all of us. It’s time to go straight to the management and complain, because if we simply scapegoat the messenger, the sacrifice offered by the innocent ones is lost and we don’t advance our human species, but simply remain entrenched in our current “civilized” illusion.
Who do we, as a species, want to be? Yes, we are spirit beings, but we are first and foremost animals. We will never realize our fuller spirit potential if we do not successfully integrate our animal natures.
