All posts by Jan

A Day in a Life: Parentage

September 5, 2012 Jan Leave a comment

Why do we get the parents we get? Why do we get distant, abusive, cold, overbearing, intrusive, smothering or rejecting parents? Why do we cling to them, asking and needing something when clearly they have nothing to offer? What is our parentage trying to tell us about our own journey? I cannot help but ask such questions, for I am a questioner of life, of the reason for being, of the purpose of my life, and so I ask questions and seek answers that make sense in the context of my life, who I’ve been and who I might become.

Photo by Chuck — Dreaming under a blue moon…

On Friday night, the night of the full moon, a blue moon, sleeping under its glowing light, I dreamed. In my dream, I’m sitting on our deck in my usual seat. To my left, in Chuck’s usual seat, sits a young attractive woman with long dark hair. She has Chuck’s spirit and energy, yet it’s not him. Opposite me sits an older woman with long white hair, slightly plump, whom I interpret as an Earth Mother type. We seem to be talking, our feet up on a small table, three women of different ages and different temperaments. Suddenly, a golden hawk flies down to the deck. It has a long feathered tail and I see that it’s looking for a place to land. I notice that it’s tail will be crushed if it lands on the floor of the deck and I don’t think this is a good idea, and so I stretch out my bare right arm to receive it. I’m aware of the sharpness of its claws and steel my arm to accept their bite, but it lands upon my arm so lightly and gently that I feel nothing more than a gentle impression. I look at this beautiful golden hawk and wonder if it has a message for me, but I see that it’s not looking at me at all, but at the young woman with the dark hair sitting in Chuck’s seat. The older woman answers my question by nodding at the younger woman, saying out loud: “Yes, it’s come for you.” My ego accepts this truth, captivated by the fact that this hawk has come at all. As I watch, the hawk pours a steady stream of golden light, from its heart, directly into the heart of the young woman. Their eyes lock and the stream of golden energy pulses strongly between them without let up, without dimming or fluctuating. The older woman and I look upon this energetic encounter in total acceptance, in unattached awe.

Photo by Jan — Beginning to piece together the mandala…

Upon awakening, I’m aware that this dream is stunningly significant, though it takes me several days; several more dream experiences to work it out, at least for now. I begin to see the mandala structure in the dream set up, the four figures describing the geometrics of the mandala and the small table at our feet marking the center. My present ego self sits in my usual seat in my dream, my maternal self sits opposite me in the form of the Earth Mother. My young spirit self sits in Chuck’s seat, and the golden hawk takes up its place opposite this spirit self as I stretch out my arm and receive it into the mandala. It belongs there; I know this as soon as it descends, and so the mandala, the energy of the inner self is complete upon its arrival. There is the sense of a circle around all of this energy in my dream and indeed there is an umbrella on the deck over this seating arrangement, and so I accept it as the outer ring of my mandala. The energy inside my dream mandala is strong, contained, protected. My dreaming self presents me with the truth of my own deep inner work, my recapitulation and my continued inner work, and so I accept that I am in a strong place now.

I’m not surprised, by the way, that I envision my spirit self as a much younger me, for in all that I know and have read about, the spirit self does appear in this fashion. In my own experience of meeting Jeanne in her energy body, she too was young and vibrant, perhaps about 30 years old, the same age as I appear to be in this dream. Accounts by many others confirm this, that our evolved spirit selves are young, attractive, and vibrant. This point alone may offer enough incentive to take the inner journey, for meeting that spirit self is quite a rewarding endeavor.

But what does it all mean? The maternal self gives the answer, though my ego self pipes up wondering if it’s come for the self that constantly seeks specialness, but as soon as the Earth Mother tells the young spirit self that it’s come for her, I accept her knowing, for she is right. The mother archetype does her job, and by her unattached acceptance of this fact of her own existence as a giver of life and energy, I too can accept my ego’s role in balance with that truth. It’s time for these two extraverted selves to step back now. All focus and all energy must go to the evolution of the spirit self. It’s time, Jan, this dream tells me, to put all of your attention into your spirit’s continuing journey. As soon as I reach this interpretation of the dream, after I have sifted through many other meanings, arbitrary and significant alike, I know it’s the right one.

How can I take this deeper inner journey when I have so many outer commitments? Is my dream asking me to forego motherhood, to forego my ego, and concentrate only on my spirit’s journey? Is the golden hawk asking me to abandon all outer life for some amorphous and uncertain inner life? In essence, yes, it’s asking me to do all of these things. It’s asking me to continue a deepening practice, to stay on the inner path. It’s asking me to examine the roles I have played in the world, since birth, and to question where I am with them now.

Am I ready to take this life’s journey to the next level? Am I done with certain aspects of self, of neediness and desire for something from others? Am I done with projecting my spirit onto others, onto Chuck for instance, as I first see this spirit self sitting in his chair? Can I take ownership more fully now, accepting this spirit self as fully my own? Can I take the ever-deepening inner journey without attachment to the myriad old selves who have thus far accompanied me on my journey? Can I turn to my spirit as the maternal self does and totally give the golden hawk’s gift to this inner self?

Peter Matthiessen, in his book The Snow Leopard, asks himself similar questions when he’s asked why he’s taking a dangerous trek across the Himalayas. He wonders at his reasons for leaving behind his young motherless children, for risking his life at every step on the slippery ice-covered paths, under threat of avalanche, blizzards, starvation even. Why would he do such a thing? He can find no reasonable answer to give his questioner, for to say that he’s doing it to deepen his inner journey does not sound reasonable enough. How could anyone find such an answer acceptable? And so he simply replies that he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know why he’s taking a journey of such risk, a journey that may leave him stranded or dead, his children orphans, but he cannot refuse it either.

Such is the strength of the inner spirit in all of us. Once awakened it carries an energy that will not be pushed aside by a request for reasonableness. Reason does not come into the equation. And so, I come to my topic of parentage and a return to the questions I pose at the beginning of this blog, for these questions are key to taking an inner journey.

Our parentage, who our parents were and what they did or did not do, to or for us, are key to taking the inner journey. In the beginning, the inward path leads us back to confronting these parents. In every part of our being we must decide where they have taken up residence. We must ask them to leave, as we gradually clear a path to our true selves. We must face the neglect and the love alike that came from them, the poor child self left to fend for itself, alone in the world, or the child self smothered by too much well-intentioned goodness. We must face the fact that perhaps we got the parents we needed to catapult us into the life we have and that the circumstances of our birth are the secret to our inner work.

As a parent, I must face that my own children got me as a parent. They got all that I had to offer and all I could not offer, all that I carried and all I could not carry, and they too must question what it means to have gotten such a person for their mother. If parenting was not part of this life, it does not matter, for the questions are the same for our inner child as for our children in the outer world. Our inner child must ask similar questions, why we got this body, this ego, this journey? In order to leave the inner parents behind and become our true selves we must all ask ourselves: What does it mean for me that I am in this life? For me.

In staying attached to our parentage, in blaming and wanting more and more from them, we end up digging ourselves into a pit of sorrow and regret, perhaps far deeper than the pit our parentage landed us in to begin with. Perhaps in our groveling we hear words of wisdom and are able to pull our heads up and look around at life without parentage as the most rewarding of gifts. Or perhaps the golden hawk visits us many times but we are so smothered in our own excrement that we do not see or hear its missives. It takes a long time to extricate ourselves from our pasts, from our parentage, from having to fulfill the desires of others and the expectations of a reasonable world.

At the same time, in fully living the life we have landed in we learn how to hone our spirit, how to contain it, how to express our creative self in one form or another so that it does not overwhelm us or take us so far afield that we are not able to retrieve it in one lifetime. If the creative spirit is allowed free reign, it can destroy us, as surely as an avalanche in the Himalayas. But, in trekking through life with awareness of our surroundings, with inner questioning and inner focus balanced by outward expression, we offer ourselves the steadiness to forge across even the most treacherous of mountain peaks.

I am a creative being, as we all are, and though I once used my creativity outwardly, in artistic expression, for I could not hold it within, now I use it inwardly. And in so doing I find that my outward expression, my creative output once so admired and abundant, has no need to repeat itself in the world. My creative energy now finds abundant outlet within.

And so, the inner journey continues to offer the greatest rewards, for I have found nothing better in this life for answering all the questions I might ask of myself and others. I have learned that in looking inward for my answers rather than outward, peace and contentment eventually come, the golden hawk finally arrives. In learning to let go of expectations of others—parents, partners, children, even our pets—in taking back our projections and owning them for ourselves, in honing our creativity for inner work, we nurture our inner child to enjoyment of maturity and a fulfilled life.

Most humble thanks for being there and taking the trek.
Love,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

Readers of Infinity: Be You

September 3, 2012 Jan Leave a comment

Life is meant to be lived. On all levels now act. Be what you so closely guard and treasure. Be who you are meant to be.

In action become the true self. Without talk or extraverted declaration, without inflation or ego-business, act upon your deepest desires and needs of the self to truly live. There is no time to waste. Life is lived in taking action and taking action that is right requires knowing the self on the deepest level. Each day, as you know the self on a deeper manner, allow that true self to live your life.

Allow the person you are meant to be expression, so that you do not hold back any longer. What are you waiting for? Life is meant to be lived. It’s time to be who you truly are.

This is the day to start being you, the real you. In right action be your true self. It’s a good day to start a new life simply being who you have always desired to be. Try it. Take one step at a time and on your new legs step into action. Oh, and enjoy every minute of it because there is no time to waste!

Channeled with love.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Disruption Leads To Mature Balance

August 29, 2012 Jan Leave a comment

We work in the garden in the early morning, weeding and clearing the summer’s growth. Time for fall plantings now. Time for a change. The energy is with us as we work in the early morning light, in the cool air and companionable silence. Our task done, we prepare breakfast and sit on the deck, content in our togetherness. Suddenly I have an urge. I want to go out to a restaurant that I like. It has a nice outdoor garden.

“Why don’t we go there for dinner tonight?” I suggest.

We discuss the possibility. After a while it doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. I acquiesce to the energy that says to take it slow, be patient, and stay put. It’s a day to be calm and to rejuvenate.

We sit and read. The air is calm, the day sunny and still. The birds are busy around us. I hear a fluttering of wings overhead and a zinging sound, like a jolt of electricity. Something has just been caught midair, right above our heads. A bird flies off with something big in it’s beak. I worry that it might be the hummingbird that had just hovered busily nearby.

We read for a few more minutes. Suddenly Chuck is restless. “I have such creative energy brewing inside me,” he says. “I have to do something with it.” I wonder if I can match it, if I can join him in this creative spurt, but no, my energy is utterly calm. I just want to sit and read. Chuck heads off to do some more yard work, shaping the hedges and ornamental trees, a good project for such energy.

While he works in the yard, I read and contemplate the energy of the day. A hurricane is brewing, and the Republicans are gathering for their convention, saying they will go ahead with it no matter what. I sense masculine energy stirring all around me. I don’t get attached, but stay in my inner calmness. I remember my own pull earlier to go out into the world and do something, yet I know I made the right decision to stay at home today.

Soon Chuck returns, his energy spent. Contented and calm, he sits beside me and we enjoy a quiet few hours. The energy stirs repeatedly throughout the day, however, both inside us and outside us and we must make decisions about whether to acquiesce to it or wrestle it down. It just seems to be the way it is at the moment.

Things progress, the hurricane continues to gather energy, the Republicans begin their convention, the masculine energy continues to stir. Aggressive and controlling, I see it playing out in many instances over the next few days. Suddenly, I realize it isn’t masculine energy at all that I’ve been feeling all around me, but feminine energy, the energy of nature, the creative unleashed.

My urge to go out to dinner was the romantic feminine stirring in me. The bird snatching food from the air above our heads was Mother Nature in raw form. Chuck’s creative urge was also the feminine urge to give birth to some new creation. The feminine was stirred in us throughout the day, offering the possibility of new adventures, new desires, new experiences.

Now I understand the energy of the hurricane as it slowly amassed and headed into land as the creative force of the feminine unleashing, no man or woman able to hold such power back. This got me to thinking about whether or not we really have any control at all, over anything. Are we just fooling ourselves in thinking we make our own decisions? Are we all just subject to acquiescence, in spite of our best efforts to control and direct our lives?

I dream. I have no control in my dreams. The feminine energy of the unconscious emerges and takes me on nightly adventures while my ego is asleep. Ego is masculine; the controlling self in everyday life, thinking it has the upper hand, thinking it’s in charge. But is it really? I don’t think so. It tries hard, it asks me to conform and abide by its tenets, yet underneath other truths have been stirring for a long time now, truths that I have learned to pay attention to. And I know from paying attention to those inner truths that I am more like the hurricane, that I am nature, the creative.

We are all this creative force, yet we must be accountable for it within ourselves if we are to live as mature beings. I must not let the creative feminine energy rule me anymore than I let the masculine force rule. I must learn to acquiesce to each of them when appropriate so that I am not overwhelmed or controlled by either. This is where I believe we do have power, the power to gain balance over the powers within us that constantly seek expression. This is how we become mature spiritual beings able to flow in the universe.

If we allow ourselves to be overly controlled by either force, we are not only out of balance, but we are not our true mature and evolving selves either. We become automatons to the powers that be, to the outside energy and the inside energy. In order to gain equilibrium within, we must attentively weigh the energy outside of us, making decisions on how to act and how we want to be in the world.

Do I want to control everything in my life? No, I don’t. I want to be available to flow with what comes, but I also know from previous experiences that I don’t need to be taken over anymore either. However, it’s appropriate at times to be overtaken, to allow both the masculine controlling energy and the unleashed feminine to teach us what we must learn. And so I have allowed myself to indulge in both kinds of energy, sometimes unknowingly and often intentionally. But there comes a time when it’s enough. There comes a time for living in the world in balance, as a mature and whole being.

As human beings, we have the opportunity to make choices. We are surrounded by nature in the raw, we have it inside us, and yes, it can unleash at any time. But in mature balance we learn to detach from and attach to it as feels right. We make decisions based on what is right for us at the moment. We can choose to maintain the calmness and contentedness we have so desperately sought and fought for our entire lives.

In always saying no, we shut the door to life. In always saying yes, we leave it open to being overwhelmed by life. When in balance we offer ourselves possibility, the door always half open, and yet our choices become ones made in awareness, knowing what we are choosing and why. In choosing recapitulation—yes, I do have to mention it because it’s my life’s work and offering—we allow ourselves to gain the mature balance that leads to calmness, contentment, and access to the awareness of knowing what is right for us, at all times.

So, my lessons this week have been a growing awareness of what it means to be in mature balance, which is really a constant shifting in awareness, as if one were on a balance beam, making slight adjustments in inner balance to meet the outer energy that seeks always to upset the ego-dominated self. It’s just the way it is; the job of the creative feminine energy is to make new life, both within and without, and new life only comes from disrupting stasis. We all need a jolt of raw nature every now and then to catapult us into new life.

Here’s hoping that Hurricane Isaac, the feminine unleashed, doesn’t do too much damage and that it leads us all to opportunity for new mature life. And here’s to my lovely daughter who is living through it at this very moment, in her little house in New Orleans. May everyone be safe.

Sending love,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

Readers of Infinity: A Journeyer Upon A Journey

August 27, 2012 Jan Leave a comment

It is time now to take all the lessons you have learned—all the tools and techniques, the discipline, containment, and limitation practices—and not only put them into deeper practice, but to step back and take a clear look at all that you have been granted in your life. Look not at the self with pity or sorrow, nor with self-adoration or inflation, but look upon the self as a journeyer upon a journey. Look upon the journey of your life as a journey of fulfillment, a journey that is showing you just what you need and how to get there.

This is a time of acceptance, for everything is now in place; the only thing missing is your awareness of this. All of you who reside now upon that planet are in a unique position to personally and collectively grow. The big question is, are you fully aware of this? Are you totally alert to the truth of major change being in your own hands?

You are the energy and the catalyst to change. You are the carrier and the deliverer of your own change in circumstances. You are the power and the provider of power. By your very existence you hold all that you need in order to grow, to take yourself to a new level of understanding, and to reach fulfillment.

Life’s journey is, as you already know, a step-by-step process. Today, though you may awaken in a bit of a fog, will become a day of clear skies, meaning clear head and clear insight into the self, if you allow it to be so. If you accept your journey and yourself as transitioning—at all times being pushed to evolve—you will awaken to many truths about the self and the world around you.

Channeled advice and vision is ancient knowing coming to guide you, full of long-ago learned truths that have fallen by the wayside in modern times. But it is guaranteed that most of you will discover your true identity and your spirit’s yearnings explained quite nicely in these ancient truths that in fact lie waiting within all of you.

Do not be afraid to channel your own truth and your own spirit. Do not be afraid of the changing self. Accept the rightness of this changing self as you confront your deepest truths, both your past and present truths. Make a determination of how you wish to proceed, knowing all that you now know, and go in that direction. You will, if you are ready, go there anyway, for your spirit will guide you. Your main task is to accept the offer. Much life is in store for you if you do.

Channeled, with love, by Jan.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Becoming A Shifter

August 22, 2012 Jan Leave a comment

One of the most important things that I’ve learned in my life and continually utilize is the process of shifting. Shifting might mean deciding not to get drawn into someone else’s drama, even when I feel I might be helpful. Shifting might mean something as simple as making the decision to drive in a different direction from the usual route. Shifting might mean breaking a comfortable routine, allowing the self to encounter something new, even if that something is potentially disturbing or challenging. Shifting might mean asking the self to forego a habit or an emotional attachment, nurturing or otherwise. Shifting might mean asking the self to turn inward rather than project onto another person or situation that which is creating turmoil or incident within. Shifting might mean asking the self to take a big leap into new life, or acquiescing to the inner process, or beginning the process of recapitulation.

The main thing about learning to become a shifter is that it requires action, and action comes from making a decision that, for better or worse, will lead to change. Sometimes shifting means going back and revisiting something that we haven’t quite finished, such as a relationship, an emotional attachment, a fantasy, until we get what we need or learn that what we thought we needed never existed there to begin with. It might mean finally accepting that our dreams are in our own hands, not in anyone else’s, and then making them reality. Shifting—asking the self to move out of one place and into another—offers us the opportunity to experience life differently and more fully.

During my recapitulation process, I discovered that in physical shift, by actually moving my body, I could aid my process. I could cut through stagnancy, repulsive thoughts, physical paralysis, and repetitive behaviors. I could shift out of memories that took over and consumed my energy. But what I also learned was that shifting took work. It required grounding and alertness so that I could maintain enough awareness to know exactly when it was time to shift. It meant daring to allow myself to take back control in situations where I felt I had no control. It meant that I had to forge a steady adult presence that could appear when necessary and make a decision about how to proceed.

This was a growing process that ran parallel to the recapitulation process. So that while I was breaking down and breaking through old stuff—disassembling the protective, defended self I had become as a result of trauma—I was simultaneously building up a strong and independent self, an evolving self. This evolving self gradually learned that it was okay to say no at the proper times, to take back as well as nurture fragmented parts of myself. This evolving self allowed the recapitulating self to have the necessary experiences, even some very difficult and frightening ones, but this self never abandoned the recapitulating self. Even when it was just in the beginning stages of being forged, it had an underlying sense of what was necessary. And so it learned to stand aside so I could have the experiences I needed to have, but at the same time it was busy capturing lost energy, strengthening each time an experience was recapitulated.

Recapitulation affords us the opportunity to become a shifter, in a shamanic sense to know immediately how to act, how to move, how to speak, and how to protect our energy without having to even think about it. For that is the ultimate goal of recapitulation, to recapture our lost energy in the healing process it affords, so that we may have it for impeccable use in this life and in the next. However, to get to that place of being able to act so succinctly and impeccably, we must train ourselves during our recapitulation to become fully conscious and to stay conscious.

Although recapitulation may take us on a journey we had not anticipated, we must forge a self willing to take the journey, not be a slave to it, but a fully accepting participant. Indeed, there are times when in the midst of recapitulation we might feel overwhelmed, taken places we don’t want to go. We might even allow ourselves to go places we know we shouldn’t go. But we must train ourselves to pull our heads up out of the muck long enough to remember that we are recapitulating for a reason, and we must be ready to face whatever that reason is. It might be clear or it might be a mystery, but we must remember that once we begin recapitulation we are surrounded by the ancient intent of recapitulation.

As we take our journey, we must become conscious of how the unconscious guides us, how intent works, and how we are guided in all sorts of ways through our trials. It is in times such as these, when we might feel helpless, that our shifting abilities are honed. In our darkest hour our greatest challenges come to teach us.

Becoming conscious requires acquiescence. Acquiescence may be the most difficult part of the recapitulation process, but once we clearly speak the words of acquiescence—Okay, take me on this journey, I’m ready to do it—consciousness will naturally arise and lead us to hone our skills. In acquiescence, we will gradually experience that which we thought we might never experience, that which we projected onto others or rejected out of hatred for ourselves, thinking we were unworthy of love, of happiness, of a life worth living.

In acquiescing to our recapitulation journey, we accept that a new self is going to emerge, in fact in acquiescing we intend a new self. We become braver and more daring as we recapitulate, as we hone our fragmented self into a new stronger self. As we dare to face what comes to greet us, we hone the ability to shift out of any potentially harmful attachment or experience. We might suffer a few failures at first, but that is just to awaken our consciousness to the reality of the recapitulation process, letting us know how it will steer us along, helping us to see just where our greatest work lies. Whatever our greatest work is—whether getting beyond self-hatred, self-pity, self-doubt, inflation or deflation, negativity or inertia—our final oath of acquiescence offers us a major tool in honing our ability to shift.

In acquiescing to our recapitulation journey we are accepting that we are part of something bigger, far beyond the world as we experience it on a normal day. We are accepting that there is good energy available to us too, and as we take our journey we find it making its way toward us more often than ever before.

Once we decide to take our recapitulation journey we discover that in conscious awareness, in honing ourselves as shifters in both waking and dreaming states, we become aware of the truth of interconnected energy, aware that we are all part of it, that it flows to us and through us. Such energy exists for all of us, but we must work at achieving such awareness and the means to accessing it. The tools are within.

The biggest and most ready tool is what our unconscious brings to us, and the next tool is our conscious decision to go deeper into our unconscious, into our darkness and our light, for they reside side by side, just as our recapitulating self resides alongside our evolving self.

We are all offered, many times in a lifetime, the choice to either go on a journey with our spirit or to reject it. If we make the choice to reject it, I can state that—based on my own previous life lived during the first 50 years of this lifetime—we will suffer. If we make the choice to join our spirit, we will free ourselves of our suffering and reconstruct ourselves according to our deepest truths, our spirit alive in us, taking us into vibrant new life. This I can state from my own decision to do so, and my own experience since then. As always, it’s a personal choice. Do I stay the same or do I evolve?

There is always support as we take the recapitulation journey. Support comes from without and within, from our guides in this world and beyond, from our spirit’s intent and the intent of the shamans, from our unconscious and conscious selves, from our memories as they challenge us to recapitulate and our evolving selves as they challenge us to trust the journey, to sweep away doubt and judgment, the old voices and the old fears, and to keep going. And that is my intention today, to pass on the energy that urges us all to evolve. Keep going! You’ll get there! Life awaits!

Sending love and energy as you dare to take the full journey to freedom,
Jan

Riverwalker Press