All posts by Jan

Readers of Infinity: Align Your Two Selves

Today, I asked Jeanne: What is the most important message for us to receive and work with this week?

Here is her answer:

In nature's intent we observe the slow and steady path to achieving the perfect delicate balance... -Photo by Jan Ketchel
In nature’s intent we observe the slow and steady path to achieving the perfect delicate balance…
-Photo by Jan Ketchel

Adhere not to the principles of old, but find, through your own inner guidance, that which is most important for you personally to adhere to. As you take your next step, stop a moment. Pause, and let your inner voice be heard. It will direct you to what is most important.

Do not rush blindly ahead, but take life one step at a time, in conscious alignment with your eagerness and your drive. Just because life flows at a fast pace outside of you, does not mean that it is right to engage, or the right flow for you to step into now. Test the waters of the energy outside of you, but don’t forget to take a long pause and really feel what is happening inside before you decide to jump in. That’s where the answers you seek lie, inside, where the direction you must take lies as well.

Detach a little bit more from what is outside and be open to what is being suggested inside. Follow the guidance of your heart. Begin to more fully navigate life from this place of calm knowing, and life will meet you in the calm rivers of spirit, in alignment with inner truth and outer reality, the ultimate goal of life as it is lived upon that earth. Once you achieve this calm alignment in that world, your seeking spirit will find its own means of taking you further, beyond that reality, in its own way.

Align your two selves now with greater intent, and greater ease of navigation will naturally follow. Decide how you wish to live your life and take the steps to achieve this. This will take some discipline. Though those steps may be slow and painful, though you may stumble often, look always for the next sign along your path to direct you onward.

The signs are there. Whether you are on the right path or not, the signs are there. They will tell you to go ahead or they will tell you to change direction, but they are there.

Patience, intent, and constant realignment of spirit in the flow of everyday life are all you need.

Go the distance now. See what happens!

A Day in a Life: To The Wonder

One day our spirit comes buzzing, asking us to "see"... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
One day our spirit comes buzzing, asking us to “see”…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

We watch a documentary. A small, insignificant moment in the film stays with me. I am struck by the scene in which a father, a Native American, holding his infant son in his arms, says that his child still sees all that the rest of us can no longer see, the spirits of the ancestors, the energy all around us.

While the father is speaking, the child repeatedly bats him in the face. At one point it looks as if he’s biting his father on the cheek or neck. The child laughs at something he sees. The father looks upon the child with love and tenderness, taking the swats and bites in stride, aware that his child is innocent, full of all that we are born with. How can he be angry or resentful; how can he take personally the assaults of his innocent young son who is so full of wonder?

The father is present as a mindfully aware observer. He is fully aware of all that his son embodies. He is tenderly and lovingly appreciative of this son so full of life and innocence, fully aware that his son is on his own journey. With this awareness the father is able to remain stable and loving, no matter what the child does. This is what Chuck wrote about in his recent blog, Synchronicities & A Tale Of Two Siblings. This is what we are all challenged to uphold, for the duration of the lives that we are privileged to be but a small part of. Our children are full of wonder. I have written about this myself in a previous blog—Who are you?—as a mother looking into the faces of my newborns, wondering who they might become.

We must remember that we are all innocent at our cores. We must treat ourselves with the same tenderness and calmness as the father in the film treats his son. We must stand present as the knowing adult self and allow ourselves to take our unfolding journeys. We must free ourselves of our emotional trappings, the things that hold us back, that keep us encapsulated in doubt and fear, in resentment and self-pity, that keep us from acknowledging the bigger picture that the father in the film so clearly sees.

This is what we do when we recapitulate. We allow ourselves to take the journey to retrieve our innocence, so that we may take up our true journey at the point where our innocence was interrupted. We are all seeking a reconnection with our innocence, with all that it knows, all that it sees. As we struggle through life, we are all asked, repeatedly, to wake up and return to this innocent, true, self.

Wake up to your own radiance, said the caller! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Wake up to your own radiance, said the caller!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

In my own case, my big wake-up call came back in 1997, when I was granted a vision of my future. I have written about this in The Man in the Woods and elsewhere, indeed all my books encompass this theme, the call of my spirit and my own endeavors to respond, and to keep responding. I knew back in 1997 that if I did not answer the call that I would die. My spirit was calling to me because it was being smothered. But I was also aware that I would physically die as well if I did not excavate my buried spirit. This is the kind of call that comes only once. This is the call that must be answered.

The small snippet of a scene that I refer to with the Native American father and his infant son is from a documentary called Wake Up, the story of a young man who did one day wake up to discover that he had the ability to see, what the Shamans of Ancient Mexico call seeing energy as it flows through the universe. In opening up to discovering why and what seeing meant for him, the young man in the film began opening himself to the energy of life as it flows in the universe. Maturity comes in being able to balance the innocence of seeing within a meaningful and productive life, allowing it to seamlessly flow in waking and dreaming, always learning, always heeding the next call.

We often wake up in our dreams, knowing that we have woken up and yet knowing that we are still dreaming. Within this kind of lucid dreaming is the opportunity to experience ourselves as energy, as innocent as that infant in the film, seeing the same way the young man in the film sees. This same kind of waking up is available to us over and over again in our everyday world, in this dream of real life. The opportunities never stop, the wake up calls keep coming. Why is it so much harder to wake up in this life and experience it with lucidity, than it is to wake up in our dreams?

In our dreams, we are already in our energy bodies. We are in an altered state, flowing with the energy of the universe, already in the collective, interconnected energy that we all experience whether we are aware of it or not. At different times in our lives, however, we are given the opportunity to become like the innocent infant again, to truly awaken and see once again. These are the times when our wake-up calls come.

What do you see? I see two tree spirits passionately kissing! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
What do you see? I see two tree spirits passionately kissing!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

In order to be able to handle what comes to us, we must take in the bigger picture, as the Native American father in the film so easily does. We must let in what our innocence is trying to tell us in the context of lives lived and life still to come. During recapitulation we train ourselves to be able to do this. Keep in mind that recapitulation takes place on an energetic plane, just as dreaming does. We are fully in our energy bodies when we access a memory; we are like lucid dreamers. And yet we must also be the adult self, like the Native American father, who stands aside and looks on with awe.

We can always decide to go back to sleep; that’s our prerogative. But, as we recapitulate and achieve a new kind of balance in the flow of our lives, we must remember that our spirit will keep sending us wake us calls. That’s its job, to always remind us that if we don’t keep waking up we’ll miss out on the transformational!

To the wonder of it all,
Jan

Readers of Infinity: A New Navigator

Here is this week’s message from Jeanne, posing a challenge to us all to navigate life from a different place.

Ready to emerge? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Ready to emerge?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Beyond the known self—the self in the world, the self who adheres to the rules and plays according to the dictates of society—lies the ethereal self, the seeking self. This self seeks not only integration into life, but a higher place as your copilot, decision maker, and companion.

If you are to evolve you must all allow this honest and true self to be present in your lives. You must not be afraid of it nor hold it back when it directs you to take a new step in a new direction. You must not hold it back when it urges you to express your deepest, most creative dreams and your most obvious talents.

This other self lies at your core. This other self knows you so well and yet often you do not know it. Seek greater connection with and awareness of this other self, this ethereal, this higher yet deeper self.

All of you have this most tantalizing and gratifying, satisfying self within. Ask it, quite simply, to guide you today. Ask it to become a part of your life, to make a decision, to lead you along another step on your journey today. Let it speak one truth today, and then see where it leads you.

Be a little daring on behalf of this deeper self. It’s really okay to live from this self, the true self, rather than from the dutiful self who normally traverses the world, who plods through life with commitment and stoicism. Learn to live a little by inviting new adventures to come from a new navigator—the deeper self within.

Give it the wheel of your vehicle today. Ask it to be your metaphorical driver and see where it takes you. Oh, and enjoy the ride! Don’t be afraid. Remember, this other self knows all and only wishes you well.

A Day in a Life: What Is The Meaning Of Life?

In a moment of awe amidst the turmoil, I look into the woods and see Ganesha, the Remover of Obstacles, calmly looking back at me... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
In a moment of awe amidst the turmoil, I look into the woods and see Ganesha, the Remover of Obstacles, calmly looking back at me…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

When asked, “What is the meaning of life?” Joseph Campbell responded thus: “There is no meaning. We bring the meaning to it.”

Our very lives provide us with everything we need to discover who we are and why we are here, offering us everything we need to find meaning. We are all heroes on meaningful journeys.

Chuck and I have revealed intimate details of our lives over the past several weeks in our blogs, having had to face moments of deep anguish and wrenching sadness. Yet interwoven within those moments of turmoil were many moments of awe, moments of breakthrough and insight, moments of transparency leading to transcendence, for all involved. Meaning is being discovered and lived each day as the members of our family take their journeys, as they face their deepest issues and broken selves, as we all face where the devastating and the magical have landed us.

All of us live magical lives. If we accept ourselves as magical beings, as magical pursuers of meaning, we find that the very lives we live are more than fulfilling. There is great power and energy in turning what on the one hand may appear as devastating and hopeless—those knocks on the head, those wake up calls—into meaningful encounters with what we need to progress and grow. “To refuse the call means stagnation,” says Joseph Campbell.

We are all offered supremely necessary encounters with our inner darkness as we live our lives and face the reality of where we are. Our real duty in life is to take what is offered as a new opportunity to face our fears and challenges with a shift in awareness. That shift in awareness must be that we are being asked to evolve, that we are being asked to wake up and take the hero’s journey. Suddenly, our journeys take on new meaning. Suddenly we are no longer victims but warriors of our own destiny. “Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging,” says Joseph Campbell.

And so, as the energy of change that has rolled through our family reverberates throughout the world—for none of us are alone in our moments of darkness or our moments of awe—as we look for the higher meaning in all of our lives, we share the energy of change with all of you. For we are aware that there is a greater interconnected web of energy that courses through us all.

As we acquiesce to that greater interconnectedness, we discover that we are all the same, that we are all nothing and that we are all everything; we are darkness and transcendence alike. We discover that we all must suffer personally for the greater good, for if we are to change the world we must suffer the changing self.

We are all capable of experiencing the transcendent. As we reach up out of our stuckness and seek meaning for all that befalls us, we offer ourselves the answers that we seek. Why did this have to happen to me? Well, it happened so you could grow. This is what we personally have had stressed to us over the past several weeks. We are all in the process of growing every day of our lives. Let that be the guidance that moves you along on your own journey.

In the deepest of challenges, and in the most radiant experiences of awe, we discover the meaning of who we are and why we are here. Joseph Campbell, whose words of wisdom have helped us weather through the flood of recent events, says: “Breaking out is following your bliss pattern, quitting the old place, starting your hero journey, following your bliss.”

Keep breaking out and bliss will meet you.
-Jan

Joseph Campbell quotes are from: Reflections on the Art of Living, A Joseph Campbell Companion, Selected and Edited by Diane K. Osbon