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A Day in a Life: Wounded Children

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I believe we are all born wounded.

Find the wounded child within

Some of us are born with physical wounds, readily apparent. Some of us are born with deep psychological wounds. Some of us are born into wounding circumstances. Some of us encounter wounding situations at young ages and some of us do not encounter them until much later. Some of us don’t know we are wounded at all. But, overall, if we are born into human existence we carry wounds that we are challenged to heal.

If we are ready to evolve into beings of higher consciousness and spiritual enlightenment our first challenge is to discover what our wounds are, to acknowledge and accept them. Our next challenge is to do everything we can to face them, to work on ourselves and the situations we find ourselves in so that we can heal and grow.

If you believe, as I do, that we choose the life we are in, then it stands to reason that we also choose the wounds and the work it takes to deal with them. I was born to distant, unemotional parents who lived out their own wounds their entire lives. My siblings and I were forced to grow up under the dominating force of those wounded child parents who were deeply cut off from feelings, with the inability to express love. If you have read my book, you know that shortly after the age of two I entered the world of a sexual predator. To what end, you might ask, did I choose that life? What is the purpose of my life?

I have discovered that in acknowledging and freeing my wounded child self, I have freed myself of a burden that I carried through many lives, that of the sexually abused child. In recapitulating, I have freed myself of my wounded parents as well, and I have freed my own children of bearing this wounding into another generation. Of course they chose me as a parent so they will have their own issues to contend with as they take their journeys, but I feel confident that I am no longer burdening them with my own personal issues by hiding them from myself.

As we ponder our wounded child self we are faced with many possibilities. Is our wounded child self known? Does it dominate us? Is it a big baby, like the 1% demanding everything of us, stealing our energy? Or is it like the 99% begging for a place in our lives, asked to be fairly treated and accepted? Is it angrily pushed away, decidedly evil? Or is it tenderly acknowledged as an integral part of our journey?

Face the fears

We are further challenged to become the proper adult figure in the lives of our wounded child selves. We must treat them fairly, without judgment, but with compassion and a firm approach. We must become a parent, loving and accepting, yet release the wounded child from its captive role, allowing it to take its own rightful place. We must thank our child self for bearing the wounds that are our evolutionary task, and we must find the means of integration, so that we may become wholly adult, all aspects of self in symbiotic balance, kept well-attended and nurtured, yet fully known.

If we are ready to release ourselves from our own traumas and face new possibilities for life we are more compassionate and appreciative of the challenges that others must face as well. We find that we are detached in a new way, having discovered that, as we recapitulate and face our personal challenges, we energetically free so many others. In freeing myself from my past I not only free my children, but I remove my negative, depressed energy from the world as well.

I believe my purpose in life is the same purpose as all other humans: to become as spiritually evolved as possible by knowing myself in the deepest way, freeing myself from repeating many more miserable lifetimes with the same wounds festering. In facing my wounded self I faced eons of wounded selves.

I understand now what it means to be deeply wounded and to really heal. Healing is what life is all about, finding the means to heal so that the world around us can heal as well. In our present lifetime it may be difficult to assess just what healing the world will look like, for it presently looks quite dire out there. With so many issues arising and coming to a head, the festering wounds of humanity now pose perhaps the greatest danger ever.

Triage is called for on a mass scale, but I still believe that each one of us must do personal triage first. We must go innerly and face the wounded self, healing the wounded child within so we can be fully present as integrated adults. In so doing we may just discover that what the world needs now is not really that much. We may discover that we don’t really need this world to be the same anymore, in fact we don’t want it to be the same because, as we recapitulate, we discover that what we once found so comforting is sorely lacking in comfort. We discover that our earthy needs are really very simple.

We really just need the world as our mirror, to keep us focused on changing our outlook on ourselves and others, to keep us focused on turning inward. We need the world to reflect back to us the real reason for being born into the life we are born into.

Achieve healing and freedom

Find out why you are born so wounded and then find the means to heal. First heal the self and then heal the world by staying deeply, introspectively connected to a healing journey of constant course correction. By living a life of deep inner reflection, intent on healing, we take full responsibility for our wounded child self and we shift our energetic configuration from one of deep sadness, regret, and woundedness to one of power, grace, and freedom. Such inner work will change all of us: our selves, our families, our communities, our world.

In the Readers of Infinity blog on Monday I noted that Jeanne once again gave the same message: Learn to listen. I am struck by how often she speaks of training ourselves to pay attention to what is going on inside us. Listening is the key to doing inner work, to finding the reasons as well as the answers. In learning to listen to our wounded inner child we must be a good listener, but we must also be a good guide.

In recapitulating, or doing any kind of deep inner work, our adult self must be alert and aware, able to flow with what comes without judgment, fear, control, disgust, or dismissal. Each time we face our wounded child we must go deeper, beyond what we think, to what we feel and truly know is right. It is a process of constant readjustment, of learning to view ourselves and the world in a different way. We must all begin to envision ourselves as evolving spiritual beings, rather than human beings stuck in endless personal misery.

I challenge everyone to approach the wounded child self with compassion and love, listening to what the issues are and what the proper approach to resolving those issues might be. The answers for how to do this are available, but we must each decide that it is the journey we want to finally take. We must decide that in this lifetime we are choosing to free our wounded self to evolve in a new manner, both immediately now and in the lifetime to come.

Love to you all as you do your inner work,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

Readers of Infinity: A Message From Jeanne

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Dear Jeanne,

A few weeks ago, I made a change in my intent to be open to all of infinity. You have been a part of my life for ten years, teaching me what it means to change, to face the inner darkness, but most of all to trust. Learning to trust people, my inner knowing, and the signs in my life that appeared to guide me, have all shown me what it means to be a changing being. As I shifted into a more open relationship with infinity, your presence seemed to open as well, expanding generously beyond the confines of a process that worked well but no longer felt necessary, for, as you had once said, I would one day no longer need you in the relationship we had enjoyed as teacher and pupil. In a sense, you were encouraging me to accept my role as a full-fledged partner. And so I have taken up the challenge. I do however, miss the special bond with you, and I suspect others may as well. So, today, I wish to converse with you directly, for old time’s sake, but also for your special brand of guidance.

As I personally opened up to trusting not only my relationship with you over the past ten years but also my own inner process, I never felt special. I always knew that everyone could learn to be so open and available to outer guidance and learn to awaken the often deeply suppressed inner knowing. Through my own process of recapitulation, a process of doing deep work on the self, I reconnected with the self I always knew existed, the self I was afraid of because she had so many secrets and mysteries to tell me. I knew that what she had to tell me would shake my world, and I had to be ready for that. Now I can only say that in beginning to listen I did indeed have to face a great shake up, but it was only through that process that I was able to rid myself of all that inhibited me and kept me from truly enjoying life. Only in daring myself to change was I ready to engage in life, gaining insight and a new outlook on my entire existence as I went through my recapitulation. It is my greatest wish that all people find the courage and strength to face their inner darkness and in that process to find that they are more than worthy of this life, discovering that it is pretty spectacular to be human, especially in these times.

I wish to converse with you on many things, but I will start with a few simple questions for today. First, when I open to guidance, open to you or infinity as a whole, (I interpret you as the same thing really) what is it that I’m actually doing? Can you explain this so people can understand it? And what could others begin to do to learn how to be open to guidance as well?

Here is Jeanne’s response:

My Dear Jan, and all you Readers of Infinity: You may not realize that you already access the greater intent of being human, that is, the intent to change, evolve, and continue in energetic form beyond the confines of that world. Infinity is always available to you—it is the great secret of being human. By that I mean that your opportunities to receive guidance abound, you just have to listen. That is all that Jan does. She has learned to listen.

All who are in human form have the ability to receive guidance, yet the mind often refuses the invitations to listen. The mind fights with inner knowing. You have to admit this, for all of you have had instances in your lives when you knew what to do, how to act, react, or be; what to say or do to change or shift out of one situation and into another; how to grab the right moment and, yet, you hesitated long enough to let the clarity of that moment blur over.

That moment of hesitation is a missed opportunity for growth. One must have a certain amount of daring to grab onto such moments of change. These moments are the catalysts in life and, yet, even in missing them one must not fall into regret but discover instead what one is meant to learn. Meaningful encounters with infinity require a little self-searching and often much more than that. Often deep inner work is what is necessary for greater change.

If one is ready to accept that life is indeed full of lessons, for a reason, then one must get in the proper alignment, humble enough to accept the position of student, though one may be very learned and quite brilliant. To become a student of life one must set the intent to be open, as Jan calls it, open to the truth that life is indeed a journey of the spirit, seeking growth and higher understanding.

In order to truly accept the grand opportunity to be a student of life in a new way, one must learn how to trust. For that, as Jan mentions, is how one will be available for making decisions and choices in alignment with awakening the inner process of self discovery.

In learning to trust, one must also learn to be daring. Although daring to listen to the inner knowing may sound like a simple enough process, it is not. One must first acknowledge that the self is full of inner knowing, grounded in ancient truths of the universe. Then one must pay attention to this inner knowing. But the biggest feat and the biggest challenge is daring to act, to accept its guidance, its truth, and its process as a whole as it unfolds.

This means that as one learns that inner knowing is available one must shut down the normal chatter and judgments of the mind, attaching only to the inner truth, the right guidance from deep within, and dare the self to pay attention.

Find a quiet place to listen

For this day, I suggest a concerted effort be made to engage inner listening. Learn to quiet the mind. There are, as you all know, many ways to quiet the mind. Pick one that works for you. With quiet mind, begin paying attention to what else is happening inside you. Are there other voices? Are there deep truths emerging? Are there answers to your questions? Find a means of listening, even once or twice a day for a few moments to start. A good time is when you first awaken or are ready to fall asleep, the natural transition times in a busy life.

Begin listening. Start with that. Other guidance will come to guide you, perhaps from me, from Jan, or infinity, or even from you. It doesn’t matter, you each have it in you. Begin a practice now of change. It’s time!

As Jeanne finished her message, I was reminded that whenever I asked her for help, she would invariably tell me that I already had the answers inside me, and indeed she was right. I just had to dare to act. I had to get to the place of ruthlessness and no self-pity too, not in a mean way, but in a gentle way, pushing away the old voices as I allowed myself to trust the process I really wanted to engage in. It was a process I’d intended long before it started, because I needed to change, I’d known it for years.

Sometimes, however, we just don’t know how to enact change. Letting the process itself guide us may be the only way to get started, and that’s a fine way to begin acquiescing to the inevitable truth that we are all Readers of Infinity. I truly believe this is true, and I fully support your endeavors to prove this to yourself. The entire universe supports you! Once you set your intent the universe supports you—this is what I experienced during my own recapitulation and every day since. All I had to do was start looking for all the signs that proved this. They appeared every day.

Thank you Jeanne! I hope you enjoy the message today. I’ll be back on Wednesday with something new.

Until then,
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Consider the Trees

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The way of the tree

We can learn a lot from studying the trees. During her recapitulation, Taisha Abelar, a cohort of Carlos Castaneda’s, lived for a time in a tree. She’d never climbed a tree in her life when she began but by the time six months had passed she’d recapitulated through many dark nights in the tree house she slept in. Over that time she had absorbed so much of tree life that she could communicate with trees directly. She learned to be silent enough to sense their needs, to know their pain, and to communicate with them through feeling. But she also found herself freed of her traumatic past.

“As I was seated on a sturdy limb with my back resting on the tree trunk, my recapitulation took on an altogether different mood,” she writes in The Sorcerers’ Crossing. “I could remember the minutest details of my life experiences without fear of any coarse emotional involvement. I could laugh my head off at things that at one time had been deep traumas for me. I found my obsessions no longer capable of evoking self-pity. I saw everything from a different perspective, not as the urbanite I had always been, but as the carefree and abandoned tree dweller that I had become.”

During the recent early winter storm, I thought a lot about the trees. As I watched them bear the brunt of the snow and the wind, I saw the parallel between learning to become like a tree, withstanding the beauty and fury of nature, and doing a recapitulation.

Trees are rooted, unable to move from their designated spots. Forced to withstand constant exposure they must be strong enough to survive yet weak enough to bend in the breeze. From the heights of the highest branches we can gain a new perspective on life and the world around us. Offering us the opportunity to gain new insights and clarity, they also offer us deep grounding. The deeper the root system, the better the connection to the life force of Mother Earth.

Trees are silent beings, observers of life, pensive and heavy, yet they jostle and sway, tossing lightly and gaily in the wind. They lose branches in storms. They topple over when their time is done and return to the earth from which they once sprang. They know the course of their lives, having lived them many times. Upon their demise, springing up again from their deepest roots or previously dropped seeds, they are ready to take on life anew. Most meaningful to us is that they give us the oxygen we need in order to breathe and live on this planet, thus their lives are more than meaningful, for they support all human life.

We too must learn to become like the trees as we recapitulate. We must learn how to stand our ground, our roots firmly sunk in the nurturing earth while at the same time we withstand the onslaughts of the past. Steady and balanced in two worlds—roots in the earth and branches reaching for the heavens—we too are capable of withstanding the onslaughts of the seasons of our lives. Whether we recapitulate a fine memory, a delightful memory, or a horrific memory too distasteful to speak of, we can learn from the trees how to handle what comes to greet us in recapitulation.

During the recent storm, I noticed the trees in my yard standing silently, accepting the unusually early snowstorm. I saw them bear the weight of the unexpected snow cover. I saw them bowing down under the weight of the heavy attack from outside, their leaves unsuspecting collaborators. I saw them bear the tension, until it was time to let go because they could no longer hold back what had been imposed on them. I heard the breaking of limbs, leafy branches that had no recourse but to snap.

I saw all of this and said to myself: This is like recapitulation. During recapitulation we are not in control, yet we strive to control in the old ways that worked for us. But during recapitulation we are often confronted with things that we just cannot control, things that come at us out of nowhere like this autumn winter. We too have no recourse then but to snap beneath the weight of the onslaught and allow what falls from us to be strewn at our feet. We too, like the trees, can look down and see our branches of self—parts of ourselves that we thought we needed to hold onto—and realize that they now lie at our feet and yet we still stand.

During the storm cleanup we can look back and wonder: Did we really need to hold onto those parts we once thought so dear? Without them we feel lighter, freer, our branches now able to lift higher than before. Freed of the burden of trauma, of the accumulation of old ideas, misconceptions, and old perceptions of the self, we are like the trees, able to experience ourselves in a new way, just as Taisha once did. No longer attached to the past in the same way we find that, having recapitulated, we are totally different beings.

There are sturdy and tall trees, oaks and maples, and yet there are supple and easily swayed trees that survive just as long, that have the ability to spring back to life no matter what occurs. In recapitulation, is it better to be so strong that our branches continually snap and break off until we are limbless? Or is it better to sway in the breeze of our recapitulation, knowing that we are firmly rooted, connected to the life force of all things, certain that new life awaits? At some point in our recapitulations we must all consider how we are going to proceed on our life’s journey. What kind of tree are we going to be?

Indeed we can and should study the trees. In their silence alone they offer so much for our consideration. Just contemplating the fact that we could not survive on this planet without them may be enough of a start. I hold trees in the highest regard and I am thankful for them. With great respect, at each breath I take, I am humbled to share the planet with them.

Jan

Messages from Jeanne

Readers of Infinity: Turning Points

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Our poor magnolia tree could do nothing but acquiesce as the storm arrived on October 29, 2011

Turn inward now, accepting the changes as they come. It is not time for dispute but only time for acquiescence to the inevitable, as the waning of one energy and the birth of another transitions through the turmoil of collision.

Turning points require stability.

Turning points require pragmatism.

Turning points require clarity of vision, of knowing, and of intent.

Remind the self of the intent of the seasons as well as the intent set by the self, by the inner process now in progress, as well as by the greater intent of the spirit to evolve.

Accept where you are at this moment. Accept that there is no other possibility and that until acceptance is allowed to play out there will be no change. In dispute or refusal, stagnation and sluggishness will result. Personally and universally is this true.

The time of now calls for decision making in alignment with the inevitable. Do not get stuck in self-pity, but do accept self-responsibility to change the self, down to the deepest roots where all-knowing resides.

We can learn from the trees...

Accept that you are as natural as the seasons, with the same intent at your core, driven by the same energy to keep changing.

The choice that must be made each day is either to accept and acquiesce, so the natural unfolding process may occur uninhibited, or to decide to be stubborn and resistant to that inevitable process that will occur nonetheless.

How do you want to take your journey? That is really the only choice to make in an inner decision of acceptance or resistant. Either way, the same story will play out.

But look...a new day arrives!

You will learn what you must, what you are most ready for, what is most necessary at this point, as you take each step of your personal journey. Go with the flow of it or fight against it? Your choice.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Creating a New Reality

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I wake up tired. I didn’t sleep well. In fact, I haven’t been sleeping well for days, perhaps even weeks. I really just want to fall back to sleep. I whine a little.

“I didn’t sleep all night!” I complain.

Waking from the dream

Suddenly I switch my thoughts. I remember a dream someone sent to me yesterday. A dream that came through in great clarity because the dreamer asked for something specific, “to go into the darkness.” With no greater intent than to learn something about the self, the dreamer had an experience that can only be described as magical. The dreamer did experience the personal darkness, but went far beyond that into experiencing the creation of the universe. The dreamer returned having experienced awe. And I remember how that works, how we get what we ask for, how we do in fact make our own dreams, waking or sleeping, by our intent. We don’t have to accept the reality we wake up to. We can change it.

Then I remember that I set the intent, quite a few years ago, to learn how to read energy. Now I find myself in a place where I read energy all the time. I’m steeped in it! I’ve been having experiences, in both my intimate world and the world at large, for quite a while now. I’ve been practicing, testing, and noting that I’m reading energy, but lately I’ve noticed that it’s getting a bit overwhelming. Time to change my reality!

Without rejecting what I’ve learned, but taking it to a new level, I say: “Okay, so I’ve learned to read energy. I’ve taught myself how to feel, how to energetically be open and accessible, but now I find that I need something different. I can’t spend my days caught up in the restlessness of our times, it’s too energy draining. I want a new calmer reality.”

This is where I find myself this morning. As I think back over the past several months, I realize I haven’t been sleeping well for a long time. I set the intent to be “in tune” and I became so tuned-in that I’m beginning to suffer the consequences of that intent. I must stop and remember that we get what we ask for. The thing about asking is to remember that how we receive is not up to us. Gifts from the universe come as the universe sees fit.

“Is that really what you want, Jan? Okay, here goes!” and the universe let me have it, but today I’m asking for a change.

“Thank you, but no thank you!” I got what I asked for, but I must not forget the far greater intent of the universe, and myself as a human being, is to evolve. The greater intent of the universe and of nature is to push us to a new level of higher consciousness.

I accept that my personal intent really is in alignment with that greater universal intent to evolve and so I know I must return to balance. I must stay connected to my personal intent to change without getting too drawn into what is happening outside of me. These have been the messages from infinity lately too: to learn from what is happening outside, take it inward, work it to change the self and allow that changed self to react outwardly in a new way. It’s a nice cycle of energy at work, change manifesting change. As I ponder this—both the fact that I originally asked to be connected to the universal energy and that by personally changing myself I impact everything else—I reset my thoughts for the day.

I intend to have a great day! I intend to create a new reality. I shift my thoughts. I’m not tired at all! I’m full of energy!

If we truly do believe that we get what we ask for we have to remember, each day, just what it is that we’re setting in place. Do we ask consciously for a new reality or do we unconsciously accept what comes? At 5:41 a.m., after a moment of complaint that just didn’t feel creative or in alignment with growth, I decided to approach the day differently. I decided to actively create a new personal reality. In so doing I proved that it’s possible because now, as I sit and write this blog, my energy is full of vigorous creative force. By my intent alone, I changed my personal reality.

I am a totally different person from the one who woke up a few hours ago and complained so sleepily that life wasn’t fair. Life is more than fair! It just depends on how we look at it, how we perceive it, how we intend it.

In addition, how we ask for something matters. As my dreamer noted, the intent was set to face the darkness, but it was left open-ended, allowing the universe to lead the dreamer to something important. And the universe answered in a big way. The next thing for my dreamer and for all of us to keep in mind, is that, yes, we must remember our experiences of awe, but we must also remember how it all came about. We must remember that we are in charge, that we impact our reality—we create it!

May we all keep intending, dreaming, and creating new realities. —Jan, with special thanks to my dreamer for sharing!