Tag Archives: awareness

A Day in a Life: Going Out Of My Mind & Loving It!

January 25, 2012 Jan 1 Comment

Once, a long time ago, when I was explaining to Chuck how I had gone out of my body, frightened that I was losing my mind, he blurted out with a big laugh: “It’s good to go out of your mind!” Anyone who works with Chuck will hear him say this at some point.

Every time he said this, it shook me. Every time I had another out-of-body, out-of-mind experience, I’d hear his voice telling me that it was good, that I should just let it happen, as often as possible. I could hear him telling me to keep training myself, in a shamanic sense: to let go of the constructs of this world by releasing my mind from attaching to them.

Photo by Jan — Like the frozen pond through the woods, our spirit lies waiting...

I knew he was right, but it took me a long time to be comfortable with letting myself go out of my mind. Now I can’t wait. Each day, as I sit and meditate, I await the moment of release from the things my mind grasps at. Sometimes I’m able to easily free myself, at other times I must sit for a long time as I work through the cogitations of my mind.

So what does that really mean, to lose the mind? In a shamanic sense, it means letting go of our judgments, our critical voices that tell us we cannot possibly be having this experience. It means shutting down our attachments to the known world and allowing ourselves to experience something outside of our body and our brain, momentarily forgetting everything our scientists, our religions, our parents, our teachers have told us is possible. It means freeing ourselves, even momentarily, from all that we perceive as real, tangible, and solid, and just letting ourselves have the experience.

Losing the mind in this way is a very sought after shamanic move, as Chuck always taught me. When Chuck suggested that I lose my mind as often as possible, he was asking me to face the dissolution of this world, this reality, and everything that I had been attached to my whole life. This went far beyond thoughts and perceptions. In fact, it extended even to letting go of the experiences themselves as anything to attach to. It took me a long time to understand this as well. Why wouldn’t I want to attach to those most amazing and transformative experiences?

In fact, Chuck was suggesting that, rather than seek out the experiences themselves, what I wanted was the enhanced awareness they offered. When we allow ourselves to lose our minds, we offer ourselves glimpses into infinity, glimpses of greater awareness. As we allow ourselves to have experiences that are out of the ordinary, we allow ourselves freedom from the attachments that hold us back in our daily lives too.

I had always had magical experiences in my life, but they got dismissed because of course they could not be true. They just could not happen in the world I lived in. But once I learned of the mystical experiences of the saints of my Catholic school upbringing, I had an inkling that in certain circles such phenomena were totally acceptable. But how would I ever be in a position to discuss such things? Even the Catholic Church, though it reveres such experiences, does not do so easily. It was in talking to Chuck about the shamanic view of the world that I finally found such experiences valued. What he described offered explanations for everything I had experienced, allowing me to release my lifelong fears that I was just plain crazy.

Under Chuck’s tutelage, I learned to balance the mystical experiences of my spirit while living in a world of solid objects and solid declarations of reality. In my inner world, I knew that reality did not work the way I had been taught. My spirit had always sought a far greater worldview. It had already experienced a world without boundaries, without limitations, without judgments. However, greater acceptance that such a world was actually a viable reality and fully accessible was not a process that happened overnight. It took a lot of work and incremental acceptance of a new sense of reality, based on my personal experiences.

In learning shamanic concepts, my psychic experiences, my meditation experiences, my magical, out-of-body experiences found a home, in a place of deep resonance. And that is when I learned that the experiences alone are not meant to be attached to, as Chuck had once suggested. For a time they were deeply meaningful—present and necessary to aid in growing—though eventually they wore thin. And then, the only thing that mattered was what came next to challenge me. It was in this manner that I began to understand that it was not the experiences themselves that were important in the long run, but just how open I could be to keep going, to keep changing myself, and to keep breaking through my attachments to a known world.

Every day I ask the universe to lead me, to teach me, to show me something important, to challenge me to let go of my mind, my self-importance, my grasping, needy, ignorant self. I ask that I learn from my experiences, and then I ask that I be freed from those experiences so that I can be open to another, and another, and another, with the intent that I never cease growing.

What am I to learn today? What am I to be shown; what gift of experience will I be offered? And can I accept it? Can I use it to go to a new level of my life on this earth, and enhance my spiritual awareness as well?

The world is now a far larger place, extending far beyond the mind and body, beyond what is real, as I have embraced a new idea of self as energy driven by a spirit that does not want to return to slumber. Real, to me, is no longer restricted to what others have taught me is real, but is open to interpretation. Real is what I experience. And that kind of real is enough for me.

To those who seek greater awareness, I humbly pass on what I have learned, as I ask myself to constantly face my ignorance and continue on this same path of enlightenment: Be open. Let your experiences come to you and, without judgment, release yourself from the cogitations of the mind. Come back to the world you live in more firmly grounded, more balanced in spirit and body, with a greater awareness of the possibilities that exist for you.

Your experiences will be uniquely yours, as mine are mine. But remember, the possibilities in this world are endless. Seek without grasping; experience will seek you.

Offered most humbly,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

Readers of Infinity: Seek The Light With Intent

January 23, 2012 Jan Leave a comment

Look inward now, rather than outward. Turn constantly away from the distractions in the world and seek truth and right answers within, for all of you contain all knowledge within.

Lose self-importance as you turn inward and become humble channels of intent. Let the self go, releasing it from all that now pursues it, and allow pure light to shine into your heart and guide you.

Ask for the light to enter your darkness. Let it in. Peek at it in small glimpses if that is all you can handle, but begin to let it in. Know that this light is available to everyone. This light of truth seeks your awareness, but only as a guide to understanding and not as a self-aggrandizing presence.

Allow the simple and empty self to greet the light of knowledge, as you greet the light of each new day, with wonder and innocence. This is how you will find your way through your darkness. Face the light that shines within with wonder and innocence and allow it to guide you, today and every day. This is what is necessary now, for all human beings.

Use it like a flashlight, as you turn from the darkness and the tales of further darkness that are being shouted across the land and around the world. Look inward, and let the light of truth shine now. Then listen to it, feel it, let it be present within and eventually turn it outward, as you go into your day. Take the light always with you. Let it aid you, guide you, speak to you, and show you a new direction.

With light, shadows recede. In the light all is revealed. In the light you will see and know the truth of your pain and your delight equally. You will discover who you truly are and who you are truly meant to be as you continue growing.

Turn inward, face the darkness with the light you carry always with you. One seeks the other—light seeks darkness, darkness seeks light—this is how new life emerges. As you turn inward know that new life is ready to envelop you.

Do not be afraid of what the light reveals, for it only reveals what you must know about the self at this time. The light is the purifier, the gift of all infinity, the way of all change. Seek the light within and use it with daring, intent upon changing the self.

Today is the day to begin a new phase of growth. Today is the day a new light seeks to lighten the shadows within. Today is a day of insight, full of potential for growth. Today is a new day in your lives.

Begin this day with wonder and innocence. Be open and fair. Be calm, gentle, and aware that there is greater meaning yet to be discovered about the self, about others, and life itself. Look inward with a new light of innocence and, with the intent of discovering greater meaning, seek new life.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Facing the Inevitable

January 18, 2012 Jan Leave a comment

We make the decision to change and then we must face the challenges of having made that decision, each day, as the old world seeks us out and attempts to draw us back into our old comforts. With the advent of the year 2012 many people are suddenly aware of change. However, such change was intended long ago, set in motion and already in full swing before most of us were aware of it.

We too set our own intentions, activate change by our thoughts and desires, often unaware that we are doing so. Life itself has its own agenda, nature taking us all on a journey of change that we might only contemplate when we are older and ready to face the inevitable.

I believe that all of us who are alive now have been participating in a transformative energy our whole lives. Why are we suddenly so enamored, so struck, so frightened of this transformative energy?

I personally experience this energy as powerful yet also as subtle. This energy is confrontational though it also gently moves us along in the direction we need to go in. This energy asks us all to change and to face the fact that we are helpless in its wake.

Every day we are challenged to lose our self-importance, to embrace a larger world view with compassion and genuine love for all beings. At the same time we are asked, by the energy of now alone, to simplify our lives so that rather than contribute to a crumbling world we acquiesce to the truth of it. In a very grassroots way, we are asked to support a new world based on honesty, integrity, openness, compassion, and kindness across the board.

The Internet alone has expanded our views, introducing us to a far greater sense of the beauty and intelligence of ourselves as a species, as well as the ignorance and ugliness of our species as well. We are all part of this expanded view that the Internet affords us. We are all intelligent and ignorant, beautiful and ugly. We are all struggling to understand the meaning of our existence and the reason for our frailties. And we are all responsible for somehow finding a balance so that we, as human beings and the earth itself, may align in creating a far greater world. All struggles are valid, all actions necessary if change is to happen.

The energy of human progress constantly takes us outside of ourselves. As we face another day of challenge and conflict in the world around us, we must not forget that there is another world that constantly challenges and calls to us as well: the inner world.

On this day, as our Internet freedoms are challenged and their restrictions protested, as Wikipedia and many other sites go black, I will be in a most unique and humble position, attending a most natural part of our existence: death.

I will turn away from what is happening in the world to sit beside an elderly relative who is facing the end of her life. I will turn toward the timelessness of all life, the inevitability of nature to take us where we all must go. I will face the ultimate truth: We are all going to die. I am going to die. You are going to die.

I don’t mean to be morbid, but I also know I cannot stop what is natural. The intent that we must all change was set long ago; before we even existed we knew that one day we would die. There comes a point when we will all be challenged to face the inevitable. We must learn now, while we are alive and well, how to acquiesce and go with the flow, with awareness.

I see the little and big changes that we must face every day as no different from death. They are teaching us how to face death when it comes. Every day, as we are challenged to keep pushing ourselves to grow, to move into new lives as our circumstances change and our spirits push us, we are preparing ourselves to face our deaths.

If we see each moment of change as a little death we prepare ourselves for our final death. We learn what it means to be aware, what it means to acquiesce, what it means to go with the flow, and our fears of death diminish, for we have practiced for it our whole lives. When we are able to face death as just another moment of change into new life, when we accept the inevitability of both death and new life, we have indeed transformed. You see, important times of transformation don’t have to wait, we can experience them every day, as we challenge ourselves to constantly grow and change.

I am grateful for the position I find myself in today. And, as the shamans of Carlos Castaneda’s line say: I am a being who is going to die.

I keep this in mind every day.
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

Readers of Infinity: Many Transformations

January 16, 2012 Jan Leave a comment

Today I asked Jeanne, and all of our guides in infinity, for a message of guidance. Here is what came through. Oh, and by the way, we are all Readers of Infinity; it’s part of what we’re here to find out. Here is today’s message:

Many transformations, begun a long time ago, now take deeper root in knowing—in body, mind, and spirit—in clarity now, rather than in muffled dissonance or unawareness.

With that clarity of awareness now revealed and firmly acknowledged, find your way into the new year that yawns wide open before you. Many transformations began over the past few days, many began over the past few weeks, and still others have been happening slowly over many years. Now is the time to acknowledge what has long been stirring inside: greater awareness of life as meaningful, as guided, as a spiritual journey leading you to fulfillment in this lifetime and evolvement at a new level in the next life.

What is meant by “next life?”

That term is used in a general sense to include all possibilities. Depending on where you are on your journey that could mean many things. Depending on choices made, opening many new doors of understanding, that could mean many new things that you have not yet encountered or considered.

But rather than get caught there, stay present in this time, in this moment of living upon that earth, and keep in mind the new awareness that you have currently achieved. For some of you this will mean greater clarity upon a journey well trod and well known as the right journey upon the right path. For others this will mean accepting a long sought after truth or purpose. For others this will mean inviting in the purpose of your spirit to lead you now as you enter new life. For others what has recently transpired to guide you along your current path may seem fantastical, magical, or too unbelievable to be true, but I encourage you to accept its transformational appeal nonetheless.

I encourage all of you, My Dear Readers, to accept the transformational qualities of life that call to you, each day, to grow and change, to make new decisions that will lead you to greater calmness, peace, and balance. Life itself desires simplicity and greater attention to the inner self, so that balance may once again be established, outside the self and inside the self.

You see, many transformations leading to greater awareness of the human condition are just one part of the journey, the very beginning of a deeper transformational process, one that must be fully explored, embraced, and fulfilled in order for new life to exist, both on that earth plane and in other planes of awareness.

I encourage all of you to advance upon your journeys now. All of you have received a wake-up call, a knock on the door, a note of appeal from your spirit, urging you to take life seriously now. There is no time to waste; life calls for greater and deeper attention to details and to what is being offered: the opportunity to transform yourself and, in so doing, the opportunity to transform all of life upon that earth.

The Earth itself is on the same transformational journey as each one of you. Don’t you notice it reflecting everything that you too are encountering and dealing with? That is why you live there now, in this great time of change. Whether environmental or otherwise, you are already in the midst of change.

I encourage all of you, once again, to wake up to this fact: change has already come. It has been taking you along on a ride of a lifetime. Can you acquiesce to its message more fully today? Can you ride its energy to where you need to go? Can you stand up to your big baby, your old habits, your deeply ingrained beliefs, and accept the truths that wash over you every day now?

Many transformations are offered. Choose wisely. In calmness turn to your spirit and ask it to guide you. In calmness it will answer you.

Be thoughtful, pragmatic, and genuine; and in calmness go forth. In calmness will new life unfold before your eyes, new truths will be revealed to guide you.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Solstice

December 21, 2011 Jan Leave a comment

I step out onto the deck in the early morning darkness. It’s balmy today and I’m comfortable standing there in the calmness before dawn. The world is quiet, not much stirring yet, though I hear a rustle of squirrel in the woods and I can just make out the broad, shadowy side flanks of two deer nibbling in the backyard. Today is the shortest day of the year and the longest night, a pivotal point for all of us as the season changes into winter. I wonder what this day will bring.

On one level we have already been feeling the intensity of this time, the build up to some kind of breakthrough, the feeling that something must give way prevalent for weeks now. Each of us must face within ourselves what that might be. Perhaps this is the day that we will be rewarded for our deep inner work, for our ability to withstand the tensions of our psyches, our bodies, our inner world being confronted by our outer realities.

Last week my 92-year-old aunt said to me: “I wonder why I’ve lived so long? It must be so I could relive my life and see it from a different perspective, because that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve been doing a life review and as I go back into different scenes and phases from my life I now see myself as arrogant, judgmental, boastful, mean, and stupid when in the past I saw myself as right, smart, and having all the answers. This is meaningful. I’m being offered the opportunity to change, and that’s good. It must be what life is about.”

She realized, as we talked, that her life review, her recapitulation, was teaching her new lessons. In looking at every action and situation in her life from a new perspective she was shedding her ego’s need to be in charge, to control, to be right, and to judge. She softened as we spoke, the awe of her inner process clearly showing on her face and in the words she used. She understood how our self-righteous attitudes and our judgments hold us caught in old places for most of our lives, until we face them and soften, with compassion for ourselves and others, and finally let them go.

Although she is old now, her demeanor that day was refreshingly young, innocent and alive. As she talked she became lighter, her face glowed with new life as her awareness shifted. The next day she called me and told me that she had more energy than she’d had in months and that she was certain this recapitulation work was so necessary for her evolution into new life, so near that on some days she wonders if she’ll make it to the end of the day.

We talked about death as being no different than life, a day like today, a solstice, a passage into new life and new awareness. The ocean doesn’t end just because you can see the horizon, I said. The sky is not finite just because we only see a small part of it. Life is the same; the energy of life passes from one reality to another, from one phase to another, through solstices and seasons, through times of turmoil and conflict, through times of great understanding and revelation. Through recapitulation my elderly aunt was preparing for her death, preparing to ride the solstice and accept the energy of new awareness.

No matter how old we are, no matter where we are in our lives, what our circumstances are, we always have the opportunity to do a life review, to recapitulate our lives in a new way. On this day, on this solstice, we are offered transition to new life. As my aunt sees it, she has a great future ahead of her. We all do. We can face it with awareness, as my aunt is electing to do, or we can go fighting, resistant and resentful, but in the end we are all going.

We are offered moments of solstice every day, though we may not see them as such. It’s often easier to embrace them when they are pointed out to us, made significant by tradition, ritual, and feast, by predictability and seasonal alignment. But in reality, every day offers us moments to shift our awareness. It’s time to embrace all of those moments as significant, to make everyday life a sacred ritual, as if we are all 92 years old and facing our deaths.

I honor my aunt on this day. I honor all of you. I honor myself, and I honor those closest to me, as we all take our next steps on our journeys.

The dawn begins to lighten the dark sky as I finish typing this blog. I breathe in its first energy and send it out to you, wishing you all happy solstice, and happy holidays,
Jan

Riverwalker Press