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Messages from Jeanne

#660 Times of Learning

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Jeanne Marie Ketchel
Channeled by Jan Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Do you have a message of guidance for all of your readers today?

My Dear Ones, do not doubt your experiences in that life you now live, nor attempt to project too far beyond the present, for in so doing will you miss some vital signs that are ready to lead you forward, to guide you as you live each day. In order to truly progress and evolve upon that earth one must not reject the mundane aspects of each day in favor of spiritual enlightenment alone. For your life upon that earth is meant to teach you something of great value so that you may evolve as a human being, as well as in your spiritual pursuits. Today, I stress not only the balance that is so necessary in order to truly grow and gain clarity, but I also stress how necessary it is that you truly accept each moment of your life upon that earth as most necessary for you personally to learn from.

Do not dismiss your issues and problems and seek to run or hide from them. Do not pretend that they don’t exist or that you are above them in any way, but accept them as significant markers of your journey, lessons that you personally must learn something from. See your difficulties in life as the tools to learning what to do next, as the next steps along your path.

In order to get beyond anger and disappointment one must truly embrace life as it comes, every aspect as meaningful and not only to be gotten through, but as times of learning. And what is it you are supposed to be learning? You are learning how to balance the reality of your world with the truth of your innocent self, who truly wants to live but who must wait for you to prepare the way so that it will be safe for that innocent self to emerge and be with you in the world. You must prepare the way by becoming strong and thick-skinned enough to withstand all that life could possibly throw at you, so that your spiritual one may join you in life, knowing that you have prepared the way.

In preparing your life so that you may allow your innocent spirit self to join you in it, your goals become clearer. As you barge ahead and remove the obstacles to your true self, and the life your true self desires, you are actually setting your intent to merge your present self with the desires of your inner spirit self.

This process does take a lot of work as you determine what is right for you in your life, what you want in it and what you don’t want in it. As you prepare your future, holding firmly to your inner spirit’s desire for true emergence and mergence, you will more clearly see what you must do. You will more clearly see the choices as either progressive or detrimental. You will see the decisions as clearly defined, as right or wrong for the desires of your spirit self.

In order to truly grow upon that earth, to take a real journey of enlightenment, you must allow your spirit to accompany you. Even though that innocent aspect of self must wait patiently for the right time to join you in a more pronounced manner, so must you allow it to speak up as your outer self battles the world and takes on what gets thrown at you. To deal with the outer world is so important, but it must be done with the whispers of your innocent spirit self constantly in your ear, allowed to speak up, even though its emergence may be far off. Your innocent spirit self is your greatest guide, so do not neglect or dismiss it from your daily life. For even as you may wish to hide from what the world shows that you must tackle, so may you be equally ready to hide from what your spirit shows you that you must tackle.

Listen and pay attention to both the outer world and the inner world. They are both present to guide you and show you the steps that will lead you to a merger of these two selves in trustful, loving, appreciative partnership, together on a journey that is indeed quite amazing.

Can you get beyond this moment in your life, by totally taking it in and working it for what it is showing you about your self and your true desires in life? Can you brighten your day by taking command of the self and possessing the inner self as often as you possess who you are outerly? Can you take the next step in conscious contrast to the fearful self, no longer hiding, but fully exploding into owning the truths of the self? In other words, can you take the next step for the self?

That is your challenge today. And it will be your challenge tomorrow, and the next day. The challenge is to own the desires of the self by taking over the strengths of the self on your own behalf, wasted not on attempts to enlighten another, but spent on fully allowing the self to reach your own enlightenment, guided solely by you, the inner you and the outer you. You are in control at all times. But you must discover what that means each day, and how best to use it for true growth leading to balance and delight.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Treasuring the Lights

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Dear Readers,

Well, the electricity finally came back on yesterday, but we are now in the midst of the next onslaught of bad weather, a Nor’easter, and supposedly this will sit over us for the next four days. I am attempting to get as much work done while the lights are on, and with a certification exam to finalize I am hoping I can get it done before the heavy snow that is now falling causes another outage. We live in a very rural area and even on perfectly fine days the electricity can pop on and off for seemingly no reason whatsoever. We feel lucky because our neighbors across the road did not get turned back on yet, their generator has been humming all night long. So, if all goes well, I intend to have a channeled message posted tomorrow and we’ll get Chuck’s blog up on Saturday, but it all depends on what happens with this current storm. Yesterday we shoveled and used the snowblower on the heavy wet snow for about six hours in order to get out of the garage and up the steep driveway. The trees were bowed to the ground and a large branch landed smack in the middle of the driveway that Chuck had to use the chain saw on because it was too heavy to even budge. And, as usually happens, the snow plows came through and piled a four foot high pile of heavy wet slush at the top of the driveway, a major chore to get through. If it would only stay a little colder the snow is a lot lighter and easier to move out of the way.

Supposedly today’s snow will change to rain in a few hours, but we sit right on the dividing line. It is predicted that if you live to the West you will get snow, to the East rain, and we are in the iffy zone. So, hopefully we will be back on line tomorrow morning. If all goes well, you will see a message from Jeanne posted by noon and if not, our Admin will be leaving you a note as to what is happening.

Until then: Happy snow day!
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

#659 Learning Detachment

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Jeanne Marie Ketchel
Channeled by Jan Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Today is Monday and we begin a new busy workweek. Although we are still in the middle of winter, spring is in the air. Over the weekend we awoke each morning to the songs of the birds and a small flock of bluebirds came by to inspect the bluebird house we have in our yard. The sun is just beginning to rise as I write this, touching the tree branches with its pink light.

During the night, I dreamed of setting intents and then detaching from them, both for others and then for myself. In my dream, you could purchase and send an intent to the universe regarding another person through Amazon. For instance, you could send intentions for the journey of another, such as intending that they be able to read the signs being offered and aware enough to be able to follow them. Then the sender could purchase their own intent to detach from that person’s choices, to let that person go with the intentions firmly set, but freed of attachment to worry about what the person would do with that intent. It was about being able to fully send another off onto their own journey while also being able to detach one’s own energy from even that intent.

I do know that learning to detach is a very big part of not only doing a recapitulation, but also of life in general, that learning what detachment really means is essential if we are to allow ourselves, and others in our lives, to truly take our personal journeys. Can you talk about the process of detachment again today?

The process of learning what detachment truly means as you progress in life upon that earth is indeed essential. Detachment comes only through experience, through the processes in life that show one how vital and important it really is to step back and allow another to take the journey that they must. However, detachment for self is perhaps the most essential process to accept and allow for. To learn to offer the self protection and private energy, in order to take one’s own journey, may not be easy, especially if one is responsible for many others in life.

It is essential to live your lives as responsible citizens, to make choices and decisions that are caring and mature, that do not leave others behind in the dust, so to speak, until it is time to do so. For there comes a time in every life when choices must be made to move on. In moving on, in making a decision to move on in one’s personal journey, it is inevitable that others may fall behind.

Decisions around family must be made in a mature manner. As your children grow out of your arms, they must discover the world on their own terms. Fully provided by your attention to their growth may they be well prepared for life as adults. Parents must allow their children to take on life, to begin to make choices and to learn what it truly means to be functioning human beings, separate from the parents and the family. Families must allow for the truth of separation and departure, for all must leave the nest.

As you speak of the return of the bluebirds, My Dear Jan, so is this a good example of growth and detachment, as eventually the fledglings will, each year, leave the family nest. The parents, after providing nourishment and housing, will leave the young to discover the world. Using their innate instinctual energy the bluebirds will separate and each take wing to whatever fate awaits. Although the birds do not assign deeper attachment to each other, as humans do, they nonetheless energetically portray valuable traits for comparison.

Their intent each spring is ingrained: to reproduce, to nurture, and then to separate, each bird fully provided and fully ready to take on life. Even though flocks may stay together there is no specialness among the individual birds, all must carry their own weight and follow their instinctual path. Many acts of kindness, and presence of one to another, is still acted out among the bird species, though I express, once again, that specialness of treatment due to family is no longer apparent once the nesting time has been completed. I wish to use this fact as a metaphor for a brief lesson in detachment.

What you are talking about today really ties in with Chuck’s blog on Saturday about the family archetypes and how we all must take our individual journeys.

Yes, the individual journey is what I stress as underlying all of this, for only in realizing the personal journey will one have reason for learning about detachment and be able to offer the self the opportunity to learn what it truly means. Detachment is often misunderstood as neglect or dismissal of another, though this is far from the case. Detachment is in fact the most considerate, compassionate, and loving of actions one can take when one is ready. For in the process of true detachment one has fully understood the meaning of a personal journey; one has fully grasped that each person upon that earth arrives fully loaded with life’s challenges that are ready to be explored and lived in order for that individual to evolve.

If one can arrive at the understanding that life is repeated until the evolutionary track is attained, then one can better understand the need for detachment. If one can gain an understanding of individual energy and the energetic necessities of the individual, as separate from all others, one may attain clarity on the meaning of life as an evolutionary journey. Many times, I have stated that life is a journey, that each person upon that earth has a personal journey to take and that each person has individual challenges that no other can attend to, especially once that person has reached adulthood and often before, depending upon circumstances. Each person has a childhood journey, as well, that is separate from the family, even though the family may be deeply involved. For all upon that earth take an inner journey, known only to that individual, while they simultaneously take the family journey or a collective journey of one sort or another.

Detachment is associated with the journey of the individual. It is a process of taking steps toward owning that individual journey, toward allowing the self to take it, but also to recognizing that all others are offered the same opportunity. All are offered moments of awakening. Although you each may see and recognize your own awakening, do you dare to proceed in the direction of your awakening? Do you see the awakenings others are offered too? And do you wish for them to take the necessary steps of change being shown?

It is quite challenging to take the awakening journey, is it not? All are challenged throughout life to take up the process of individuation. How many times have you personally been challenged? And how many times have you rejected the call? How long did it take before you finally accepted the fact that you would not progress in life until you finally made the move your self, alone, and because it was finally the right road for you to take? How many times do you look upon another with despair at the choices being made? But who truly has made the proper choices at all times? All must stumble through life and learn, in the process, what the meaning of their personal journey is. But how can they do that if they do not take up all the challenges that they must? How can anyone evolve if they do not live out the life they must?

These questions are meant to allow for an understanding of the individual journey as well as the responsibility that each individual has to take that journey. Turn to the self now and ask: Have I truly taken up the challenges of my own personal, individual journey? Am I learning what I must learn about the self, innerly and outerly? Am I taking the deeper journey?

In taking the deeper journey, the ideas of detachment and evolutionary growth will become clearer. But for now, I advise that to allow for detachment to become a familiar idea in everyday life, that you ask the self these simple questions, each day, when necessary: Should I be putting my energy here or there? Is this my journey to take, or is this the responsibility of the other? (Determining self from other is the first step in learning detachment.) Whose journey is this about? Who must take this step? Who is responsible for this action?

I could go on and on with many suggestions for determining the appropriateness of aiding another as they take their journey. But I believe that it is far more important for each one of you to confront the self at each step of your own journey and question the appropriateness of your actions based on the challenges you face. Are you choosing to take the evolving journey or are you choosing to continue avoiding that which clearly has revealed itself to you as the right path to take?

Each day you have personal choices to make. Tiny and insignificant though they may appear to be, they are being offered so that you may grow. Look upon the others in your life. They too are offered equal opportunities for personal growth. Acknowledge that truth, and then step back and let them take up the challenge while you challenge the self. That is allowing the self to learn detachment. And it is allowing the other to be responsible for learning how to guide the self through even the most minor of life’s tasks, learning to evolve and, eventually, to leave the nest, fully ready to take wing upon the individual energy, and this is good.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: 10 Steps in Inner Work & Recapitulation

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With today’s message, Jeanne gives us the tenth step in engaging in a process of inner work and recapitulation that I began channeling on January 29, 2010. The last ten messages have been around this process. To recap they are:

1. Patience
2. Perseverance
3. Kindness
4. Innocence
5. Maturity
6. Commitment
7. Fearlessness
8. Truthfulness
9. Responsibility
10. Letting Go

Each one of the topics above is linked to its original message so that you may more easily find each step and keep them together, valuable tools in the recapitulation process, which is really what inner work is all about. I will also add them to the sidebar, under Guidance, for easy access. Although I do not, at the moment, have the intention of continuing along this line of questioning when I resume our channeling sessions on Monday, you never know. There just might be more to come. But, on the other hand, having engaged and being engaged in the process of recapitulation myself, I think these ten steps are pretty detailed and offer quite a lot to work with for some time to come.

In my own process, which started in earnest about ten years ago, I can attest that I did in fact go through each one of these steps, and they are still useful, because each day as new challenges are presented the process of growth continues, if you choose to engage it. The process never really ends, but advancement is certain. As you do the work, you do change. I can attest to that too.

As I channeled these ten steps over the past several weeks I recognized them as very familiar and very challenging friends, friends that I grew to know intimately as I worked with and through my inner world in a very thorough recapitulation. That recapitulation consisted of removing the veils of time and uncovering and facing memories, fears, ideas, truths and untruths of who I was, who I had become, and why, but also gaining clarity on who I once really was behind the veils and who I had the potential to really become as I allowed the process to unfold. I can say that having taken that journey, having plunged ahead through some very difficult stuff, that you can truly change. I did. I would not be here, doing this today, if I had not dared to take the inner journey.

So, Good Luck as you undertake the deeper inner journey! Feel free to post comments below. There are a lot of people trying to figure out what their lives mean and you never know if by sharing some experience of yours you might help another.

Until next time,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

#657 Letting Go

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Jeanne Marie Ketchel
Channeled by Jan Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
What would you like to discuss today? Is there another step in the inner process that would be valuable guidance for us at this time?

The inner process must include the very practical step of letting go, which entails not only physical and emotional release, but learning the process of detachment in such a way that makes personal and growth-oriented sense. In letting go one moves beyond the intensity of the mind, one learns how to progress and how to take steps that lead to real change. The opposite of letting go, holding, results in stagnation, pain, and forced anguish. In order to do inner work, leading to true integration, the process of letting go must be engaged.

What would be some of the steps in learning to let go? It is probably the most difficult part of the inner work.

If one is intent on changing the self and the circumstances of one’s life then one must not only cultivate the process of letting go, but one must become truly expert at it, for it is an invaluable tool. In learning what it means to let go, one opens the door to real change, and this experience of change is immediate. One does not have to wait months or years for the effects of letting go to manifest. In simply undertaking physical relaxation one feels what it means to let go on a very immediate and personal level. In physical letting go of muscle holdings, for instance, one may actually feel relief as tension and pain and stress leave the body. As one allows the self to experience physical unholding one begins the process of going deeper to other holdings, such as holdings within the psyche and the mind, within the unconscious and the conscious self.

Having engaged in the practice of yoga and meditation for many years I agree that simply achieving physical release is extremely beneficial and I know that once engaged it opens the door to inner release. How does one allow oneself to go deeper? I think that is a pretty difficult step for most people, since as they go deeper all of their fears arise.

Yes, you are most correct, the greatest block to unblocking and to letting go is fear. But as I have stated many times: what is fear but an imaginary aspect set up to challenge you. For in reality, fear does not exist except as you conjure it up, as you present it to your self, a most useful tool until you no longer need or desire it.

Fear is a habit like any other. You can choose to engage it or you can choose to ignore it and allow it to leave your system. You have all programmed yourselves to experience FEAR. You have used it as a tool to teach and guide you through life. You have found it to be extremely helpful and useful, and it does have its place in heightened states of awareness, but even so I prefer to teach release of it so that you may train your self to rely on your innate, instinctual abilities of awareness and inner knowing rather than your learned fear, for your fear is twisted. Your fear is related to what you have been taught in that world, to what you have taken on as routine and plodding behaviors that you do indeed seek to undo and change.

So, if you can accept that fear is attached to what you have learned is fearful in that world, conjured by the teachings of others, by judgments, criticisms, lies, and tactics of manipulation, then perhaps you can begin to put fear into an old category. Perhaps you can relabel fear as intuition, as instinct, as sensitivity to energy, as inner knowing. Perhaps you can take it out of the physical world and place it in the meta-physical world of energy and proceed to ask it what it is telling you, using your instinct, intuition, sensitivity to energy and inner knowing, rather than attaching immediately to it in the old way.

F-E-A-R. Spell the word, one letter at a time, slowly, and allow your physical body to relax as you speak the letters. As F-E-A-R leaves your mouth let it go. It is nothing more than letters, than sounds spoken, broken down into nothing more than individual pieces of nothing. F-E-A-R. Break it down, one letter at a time, until your body relaxes, until your physical self no longer recognizes it for what it used to be and hold. Use this technique to break down F-E-A-R, but also to break through your notion that F-E-A-R has any meaning at all.

This is a process of turning something of power, something that reigns over you and controls you into nothing more than breath leaving your body, air dissipating in air, released. You can do this with anything that bothers you and holds you captive. You can do this with W-O-R-R-Y, with A-N-G-E-R, with the name of a person. You can learn to let go in this very natural and easy manner, simply by spelling away the issues that hold you fast to old ideas and habits and the needs of an old world. If you are truly ready to grow and change then you are also ready to re-envision all that holds you now bound to an old world, to old practices. If you are truly ready to change then you will take on the letting go process with a fuller understanding that this is the step in your inner work that will allow for a real shift, a shift that you may feel immediately, physically, mentally, and emotionally, as you practice letting go.

The practice of letting go is manifold. It is multilayered and many leveled, but it is most beneficial to offer the self a simple manner in which to begin its incremental climb down into the deeper regions of the self, from the outside in. In learning a practice of physical letting go, by changing some old attachments with gentle release from their meaning and their power, by dismantling them one letter at a time, you will remove the blocks that hold you from greater release. And you will offer access to learning what true letting go, true detachment, and true inner work is really all about.

You have no idea what you have waiting inside you, until you dare to go looking.