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Messages from Jeanne

Readers of Infinity: Room For Improvement

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In every moment there is the opportunity to change, like these blossoms that no longer exist, but new leaves have sprouted... nature is in constant flux... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
In every moment there is the opportunity to change, like these blossoms that no longer exist, but new leaves have sprouted… nature is in constant flux… – Photo by Jan Ketchel

Here is this week’s message from Jeanne:

There is always room for improvement, for tweaking and perfecting. In all walks of life, in all aspects of life, in all you do, think and perceive there is room for new insight.

Allow the self, over the next few days, to notice just how you repeat yourself, how you go into automatic pilot and without consciousness simply operate as if you were a robot. Robots do not embody spirit. They are mere machines. Is that what you want to be, a mere machine?

Life, in order to be fulfilling, must include goals and goals, in order to be achieved, must involve disciplinary action. Without judgment and self-criticism, but simply because it is time and you are ready, embrace a new disciplinary plan. Set your goals and strive toward them, one step at a time.

Allow the self room to maneuver through the energy that arises each day, not so hard that you can’t flow, because it is in the act of flowing that you will learn what it means to grow and change. If you are too strict there will be no progress, just as there will be no progress if you are too lenient. Inflexibility is just as damaging as overindulgence.

Allow the self to be aware of the energy outside of the self, even as you seek to hone your inner energy, for it is only in compatibility that these two forces—inner and outer—will align and balance. Thus, to be innerly aware is as important as being outerly aware.

Watch how you operate in your own world. Who rules you? Who commands, directs, and charges you with your tasks, judgments, and your ideas of self and other? Who is really in charge? Seek connection with the spirit that resides within and allow it to guide you. This is often easier said than done, but with intent, discipline, and a keen inner awareness you should be able to hone your attention on this inner spirit self over the next few days. Begin there, and then flow with what comes, allowing the self to relax with this inner self. Accept its truths and be open to accepting its guidance. The flow of your life will change as you both release and hone, let go and yet discipline yourself, constantly realigning your intent, innerly and outerly.

Life is an unending flow of moments—of energy and opportunity. You are already in the flow of its offerings. Now it’s time to be in your life fully aware, accepting of what comes to greet you and determined to experience it to the fullest. That’s the challenge.

A rush of energy will follow shortly. Feel it and know that it is the energy of life itself flowing through you. It might feel like too much at once, or not enough, but you will remember it for its truthful presence. It’s up to you to tame it so that it feeds your needs but also so that you remain fully aware, in balanced alignment with it. With your intent set to change, use it to your advantage. You are in charge of how you elect to use it—the flow of the energy of life as it flows through you and everyone upon that earth. Let go of your crutches—in whatever form they are—and let the energy of life in.

Each moment is new and vibrant and available for you to use to your advantage. The choice becomes: Do I grab it and go, shift into new life, or do I have to stay where I am a little bit longer, or even a lot longer? You decide. Then act, take action on your own behalf. Hone your awareness if nothing else.

Change takes proactive energy; that is being in alignment with life and taking action on your own behalf. No one else can do it for you. If you want change, make it happen for yourself. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. What are you waiting for? The energy of life awaits! Feel it flowing through the universe. It is your present and your future, already available to you, already flowing through you. You just have to become aware of this and let it guide you.

Seek compatibility in all you do, in where you go, in who you go with. Compatibility is the key.

Messages from Jeanne

Readers of Infinity: Seek The Divine Within

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Here is this week’s channeled message from Jeanne:

This is what greets me when I step outside—a crow feather and a pistachio shell—a thank you gift from the critters I invite into my energy space... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
This is what greets me when I step outside—a crow feather and a pistachio shell—a thank you gift from the critters I invite into my energy space… – Photo by Jan Ketchel

Watch your energy. Study how you use it during the day. Study how you tend to end your day, your habits and proclivities. Study how you acquiesce and how you pander to your desires over your true needs. Guard your energy so you may use it for personal growth and instruction. Learn to take it back from that which offers no knowledge or instructional proclivity in return.

The point I make today is that your personal energy, uncontaminated, is of the utmost importance. Be concerned, therefore, in how you use it and in how it gets used without your awareness. To become an enlightened being one must study the self in many situations in order to understand the self, in order to retrieve lost energy for deeper inner work.

It is not enough to pray for guidance. One must enact one’s own guidance, from within. One must become one’s own guru, one’s own teacher. Seek knowledge within, for it is only in studying and knowing the self, without judgment or self-importance, that one will be able to know more. In studying one’s energy usage, one has the opportunity to retrieve lost energy, protect energy, and utilize energy for the inner process. Knowledge and foresight, deeper intuition, and greater awareness will come as one returns one’s personal energy to the personal inner source.

In inner contemplation comes clarity about the world, the self, and the use of energy—how it works to both benefit and harm the self and others. Positive energy vibrations exist and these positive vibrations are worthy of attention. Prepare the self to accept such positive vibrations from without by preparing for reception of them from within.

Inner work is the key to contentment and full realization of life and energy. Awareness is the tool. You hold it within. Wake it up a little bit more each day by studying the self on a deepening level. Don’t be afraid of what you hold within. It is mere illusion, blocking you from your deeper truths. Once you let it go you will experience the divine within. This is what you seek, inner divinity and inner peace, without attachment or self-importance. You simply seek what already exists. In this way will you change the world.

Seek the means of change within. In humbleness and simplicity, ask the raw self, the real self, the divinely pure self to guide you as you take your inner journey. Know this self and you will be halfway there.

“Halfway where?” you might ask. The answer to that is: Halfway to eternity, halfway to completion, halfway to the wholeness you seek, halfway to inner peace.

Love yourself. That is how to begin. Just love yourself enough to start a new process of energetic study. Go halfway to meeting that self—halfway each day—and pretty soon you will be meeting and greeting yourself like an old friend.

“Nice to meet you again! How’ve you been? We’re halfway there! Let’s keep going!”

Let yourself reconnect. Let yourself be okay with what is. Let yourself be okay with “me.”

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: At The Gate Of The Failed Sorcerers

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The gift of gargoyles is that they come in all shapes and sizes, ugly and beautiful... Photo by Jan Ketchel
The gift of gargoyles is that they come in all shapes and sizes, ugly and beautiful… Photo by Jan Ketchel

At a lecture in a Pasadena bookstore in 1992, Taisha Abelar, a sorcerer in the same lineage as Carlos Castaneda, spoke of the graveyard of the failed sorcerers as the second gate of dreaming that Carlos wrote about in The Art of Dreaming. Dreaming, in the shaman’s world, is the act of gaining awareness, training with intent to hold onto that awareness no matter what world one enters.

This graveyard of failed sorcerers is a kind of shaman’s limbo, filled with journeyers who couldn’t release their attachment to this world upon dying. Those failed sorcerers continue to feed upon life in this world as the ghosts and vampires that both fascinate and terrify the living. Energetically, these inorganic beings continue to experience life in this world through the emotional roller coaster they induce in those who interact with them.

The Shamans of Ancient Mexico, through interaction with these inorganic beings, were able to venture deeper into the layers of the onion—into worlds of awareness beyond normal perception. But many were also destroyed by attachment to the “gifts” offered by these failed sorcerers.

Prominent among these gifts peddled by these inorganic beings are a variety of elixirs of immortality that allow those in human form to partake in the nectar of infinity. These elixirs come in a variety of flavors, such as the sweet perfume of timeless romance, the passion and dreams of alcohol, the soothing nursery of opiates and food, the adventures of psychedelics, the rush of possibility in the bet, the excitement of “more” material possessions, or the rapture of power.

These elixirs of immortality quickly transform into habitual bondage. That which once thrilled becomes the source of sustenance to merely maintain life. The thrill thrills less or is altogether gone, but the dependence on the habit takes center stage to life—freedom exchanged for dependence.

The failed sorcerers at the second gate of dreaming are gargoyles—guardians of deeper knowledge. To pass by the gate we must partake of the treats they offer. We all must interact with these sorcerers; stoicism is nothing but a dry drunk addicted to the self-importance of refusal and resentment. In one form or another we must all take our sensual journeys in this world. We are humans after all—why else would we be here! The challenge, however, is attachment. Can we let go when it’s time to move on, or will we insist on the addiction of MORE?

That is the trial of addiction, the refusal to move on when it’s time to leave. That’s the dilemma of the failed sorcerers parked at the second gate of dreaming—their refusal to relinquish attachment to life in this world and move on, yet a refusal as well to fully reincarnate. They are stuck with one eye looking forward, the other backward. It’s wanting the best of both worlds. They hold onto this world through their addiction to our energy, which in turn is caught in addiction to the elixirs they offer.

Nonetheless, these gatekeepers must allow those ready to refuse belabored attachment—addiction to their array of elixirs—to travel beyond their gate into the next layer of dreaming awareness. If we partake in the elixirs of life in this world and refuse MORE we advance. This is sobriety.

The truth of Buddha is that he represents the Atman in all of us... Photo by Jan Ketchel
The truth of Buddha is that he represents the Atman in all of us… Photo by Jan Ketchel

True freedom lies in sobriety. The Shamans of Ancient Mexico observed that humans who refuse the bait of self-importance change their energy state and the gatekeepers let them pass. Ultimately, self-importance is the trapping of addiction. Partaking on an ongoing basis of the nectars of immortality is treating oneself as if one were a god. Somewhere it was once written: Thou shalt not have false gods before me. The energy state of addiction is an inflated state of self-importance, a false god.

The ancient Hindus maintain that Brahman, the Atman, God, is indeed within everything. However, to be one with that true God is to peel away the layers of the onion, the trappings and wrappings of illusion. Illusions are the false gods, the elixirs peddled by the failed sorcerers.

The energy needed to find total freedom, union with Atman—the energy the failed sorcerers don’t touch—is sobriety. Sobriety is grounded energy that stays aligned with truth and fact on its path to divine union. This is the shaman’s path—sobriety.

Intending beyond the gate,
Chuck

Messages from Jeanne

Readers of Infinity: Are You Paying Attention?

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Are you aware that a new path is before you?

Dear Jeanne: What guidance do you have for us today?

Do not be fooled by appearances. Change is taking place, deep and lasting change, and although this change may not occur in a manner anyone is used to, it is happening nonetheless. This is a time of great shift and with such a time comes great awareness. Are you paying attention? That is the real question?

Are you paying attention to your own deepest knowing, and what are you going to do about it, return to an old way, becoming complacent and docile yet again? Or are you going to flow with the shift now being offered?

Energy is available to greatly advance the cause of human consciousness for the individual as well as the masses. It is up to each one of you to remain aware, to prod the self to stay awake through this time of great shift and be a part of its impact.

Change begins with the individual. Accept what the energy is trying to alert you to on a deeply personal level before you begin to look outwardly. If you will dare to stay awake and move toward a new positive direction, the energy of such change will proceed along the same path, supporting and nurturing and healing you, bringing you forward into new life. If you fail to stay awake this time, be aware that you will have two hard years ahead of you, as you continue to battle your issues of dependence, negativity, and fear.

Though this may sound like a dire prediction, I stress quite the opposite, for it is not. It is equally positive and growth-oriented, for it is only in wallowing in the self that one will find the means to change, for the self is where the answers lie. The question you must ask the self is: Am I ready now to make certain changes? If you are, be aware of what comes to guide you, for there is great positive energy in abundance for the right kind of change. If you are not yet ready, that’s okay too. But you must also be aware of what comes to guide you, for you too will find that you are supported as you take an equally deepening journey.

Change begins and ends within, but is always reflected without, and this is where you will all learn your greatest lessons—in what reflects back at you.

Take the steps you personally need to take. This may involve leaving something, beginning something, changing something, evolving something, but this will also mean that if you are daring the self to change for the right reasons that you will be in alignment with nature and the universe.

I have no doubt that all upon that earth will encounter change, intentioned or not. And, as I said in the beginning, the main question is whether or not you will be aware and available to know this, so that you can take full advantage of it, aware that it will catapult you into new life. Or will you resist it?

Resistance is a result of fear, and fear digs deep into the human psyche, its marks going back to infancy, its roots difficult to decipher from the roots of innocence. Confront the deepest roots of the self. Find your fear and you will also uncover your innocence. Perhaps that is the place to begin the deeper inner work that will lead to new and lasting growth.

…and good will toward all…

Oh, and keep in mind: as you notice how the outer world and how those in power seemingly ignore the deeper issues of compassion, kindness, and love for all living beings, notice how you do the same to yourself. This is a universal issue, and everyone must address it inside the self.

As your world struggles, so do you, and this is good, for it is the key to finding your own deepest conflicts. No blame now, just growth. That’s what is called for, on all levels of life.

Thank you Jeanne! Peace to all.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Choice

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A strange da Vinci flying machine…

The other day, as Chuck and I walked in the early morning, a strange sight greeted us. We had just arrived at a “T” intersection when to our left a commotion arose.

Out of the treetops a strange creature appeared. Squawking and flapping, it came towards us, a phoenix or some other mythical beast. On second glance it appeared to be some manmade object, whirring and clunking along in the sky, much like a Leonardo da Vinci flying machine. As it drew nearer it changed again, into a hawk with two small birds clutched in its claws, the birds flapping and shrieking wildly in an attempt to free themselves from the clutches of this, indeed, mythical beast.

As we watched, one of the birds did free itself. Somehow able to wriggle out of the grip of the sharp claws, it quickly flew off into the woods with nary a backward glance. The hawk flew over us, and though its tasty meal still struggled frantically, it seemed that its fate was sealed.

Much startled by this sight, we turned to the right and continued our walk, our thoughts and discussion turning too. We had been talking about our deepening practice as spiritual beings on a journey in this world, of constantly having to balance the magic of other worlds with the duties and needs of this world. And thus, we could not help but wonder what this sighting could possibly mean.

Our kind hearts immediately projected onto the poor little birds. And two of them! We thought in terms of loved ones. Who was at risk; who would be confronted with some terrible trauma today or in the near future? What did it signify for us, the first thing to catch our attention on this day, and so early in the morning? What did it portend in our own lives?

As we watched the hawk fly off down the road ahead of us, the siren cries of blue jays—the birds I interpret as the police force of the skies—alerted other creatures to be aware that a predator was in their midst. But there was really nothing to be concerned about, for the hawk had gotten what it wanted; its only intent now was to consume it.

Who’s the predator?

My thoughts turned away from my projections and fears, for self and others, and instead began to look at the reality of what had occurred. The hawk began to lose its predatory role and take on the role of life itself, doing what it needed to survive in this world, much as we all do in our own lives, consuming and taking what we need. The two birds lost their roles as poor creatures of circumstance and instead became the choices we all make each day: the choice to live one way or another, the choice to do one thing or another, the choice to come into this world at all.

“You know,” I said to Chuck, “one bird is going to live and it looks like the other will die, but who’s to judge which one got the better deal. Do I feel sorry for the one that’s facing death? Perhaps it’s being given the opportunity to go deeper into its evolutionary experience? The very thing we seek all the time.”

As I pondered the significance of the event, I realized that we all get carried away by predators in our own lives, by our compulsions, addictions, attachments, our fears, our psychological makeup, by our very nature, and by the very energy of life that is as unstoppable as the predatory hawk simply searching for sustenance to survive. We are all both the hawk and the two birds. Often enough, we are caught unaware, taken from our perch and thrown into turmoil, forced to fight for our lives, to make a choice that will take us on a new journey. Even in the most mundane of circumstances our choices matter. As we plod along in our daily lives it becomes increasingly necessary to train our awareness to stay upon the path of growth, intent upon a life of meaning and evolution, no matter what our circumstances.

I could not judge the outcome of the event, for I saw the potential for growth in both life and death. I see the potential for growth, for going deeper into the life we are in, no matter where we end up. I cannot judge another for where they are in their life, just as I do not wish to be judged for the choices I’ve made in my own.

We all have the same choice to make: How are we going to deal with where we are now? Are we going to be the evolutionary beings we are meant to be, conserve our energy for our journey and go deeper into our experience, no matter what it is? Or are we going to succumb to the predator, our energy consumed by another, by everything from worry and fear to mental illness and disease?

As the shamans of Ancient Mexico point out, we are beings who are going to die. I see death as offering as much choice as life. As I saw what was happening to the two birds, I knew that one chose life and the other chose death, but also that both were worthy choices, both presenting evolutionary opportunities. The opportunity—and this is what we are training ourselves for as we recapitulate, and as we seek connection with our deeper spiritual selves—is to remain aware of our evolutionary potential at all times.

The journey matters…

Recapitulation offers us the opportunity to practice the skills necessary to maintain our awareness. Each time we recapitulate we experience a little death, a loss of our perceived self, while we simultaneously regain a part of our lost energetic self. This involves remaining aware that we are in two worlds at once, both in the energy of the predator and simultaneously the victim of our circumstances, like the two birds in the claws of the hawk that flew over Chuck and I the other morning. Recapitulation is as much practice for how to live this life as it is practice for facing the moment of death from this life, two evolutionary paths of equal value and potential.

We all stand at a “T” intersection every day of our lives—we have choices to make, and those choices matter. No matter what our fate, whether we are the little bird that gets away or the little bird that goes to its death, we always have the opportunity to go deeper, or not.

Love,
Jan