Jan's morning dream image: We each hold love in our own hands...
Smell sweet scents of nature. Listen for sounds of beauty. Walk upon the earth and own its beauty. With humility and deep compassion be its mentor and its guide, for you human beings are responsible now for all that you behold. Do you care to lose it? Or do you care to truly love it?
In love there is only caring: for self and other, for that which is right, within and without.
Find peace in your days upon that earth by reckoning with your troubles as an individual and as part of the whole.
Find peace on earth by giving rather than taking.
Find peace within by loving in the midst of both your joys and your sorrows.
Find peace in right action, in balance with nature’s generosity, but do not be greedy, for then will peace be destroyed.
Be solid citizens of earth, of the self, of each other, for you are all worthy of peace on earth.
Dream told Jan to put index fingers over heart, creating a roof, making love available for both giving to others while still containing for self...
Find yourself more than worthy of the earth’s calm energy as you soak up its love for you. Can you accept that loving energy from the earth itself and return it with equal love? This is what man is now charged with upon that earth: balancing energies of love by achieving balance between nature and self. This is how to change the self and how to also change the world.
For the past week the Dalai Lama has come to me in my dreams. Sometimes when we wake up in the morning Chuck tells me that he has also been dreaming with the Dalai Lama. This is significant. What I am learning from the Dalai Lama is important. He has been teaching me how to handle the energy of now, the pushing, almost volatile energy of late that has been unrelentingly asking us all to face ourselves, what comes to us from within, while simultaneously withstanding the onslaught of the turmoil of what comes to us from without. We have all been suffering lately through the same kind of energy that Buddha encountered during his 49 days under the bodhi tree. And, as Chuck mentioned in a recent blog, the energy is not going to stop, it is coming at us with the speed of light!
This kind of energy circulates through our lives often enough that by the time we are adults we should be pretty used to it, but that doesn’t mean we handle it well. It takes awareness—recognition that we are in this type of energy state again—as well as a concerted effort to achieve balance and calm so we can not only maneuver through it but learn something as well.
In my first dream, the Dalai Lama handed me a fifty-pound bag of sand. He then instructed me to create a circle with it, large enough for me to walk around in. He showed me how to use the sand to build a little wall, just a few inches tall, sloping upward to a point, as if to create a small mountain range. The point, he told me, was to create a barrier between what was outside and what was inside. I worked on building that wall all night long, getting it just right, refining the edges, perfecting the circle. It was satisfying work and by the time I was done I had created what I set out to do.
The next night, the Dalai Lama came again. This time he instructed me to define quadrants within the circle, four equal areas that defined my life. The first quadrant became my inner world, the second my work in the outer world, the third my relationships with others, the fourth my home and my personal life. These quadrants, he said, must always be in balance.
I constructed a mandala...
When I woke up from the first dream it was pretty clear that the Dalai Lama was instructing me in making a mandala, a dream mandala, I thought. Little did I know that it was more than just a dream manifestation. By the third night I understood that it was a working mandala, merging the Shamanic process of recapitulation with a most important Buddhist practice. On this night, the Dalai Lama taught me about detachment, probably the most important practice in both recapitulation and Buddhism.
On this night, the Dalai Lama taught me that I must constantly utilize and hone my practice of detachment as I encounter the onslaughts of energy that are constantly present, whether from within or without. He instructed me to face what comes to me, to dissect it thoroughly, understand it completely for what it is and what it is teaching me, and then to let it go and move on. I sat in the different quadrants of my mandala and did as he instructed. His hand gestures were always prominent in these dreams, but this night they were broad sweeping movements as he demonstrated pushing the finished product of my inner process away, actually expelling the energy beyond the walls of my mandala. “Be done with it!” he said. “And then move on! That is detachment!”
By the fourth night I was beginning to wonder if he would come back. I wasn’t really surprised to find myself in his company once again. This time he spoke of compassion, instructing me in achieving calm within no matter what came from without, but with gentleness and compassion for myself as I went through the process of detachment. He told me that I had to get to a place of detachment in order to fully understand compassion, and that I had to get to a place of compassion for myself if I was going to truly be able to be compassionate toward others. He told me this was an endless process of facing both the inner and outer world, for there will always be something new each day to figure out and detach from with compassion.
Honing my awareness...
The next night, he instructed me, in a final note, to remember that all of this had to happen with awareness that I—my ego self—was not all that important. What was most important in all of this practice was honing my awareness so that I might also hone my energy. This is the ultimate reason and the goal in life. The daily challenge, he told me, is to face what comes in life in full awareness that it is the path to enlightenment, to full awareness and use of energy. How I express my energy through this body that is me—how I meet others in the world, and how I elect to live my life—all matter.
In essence, the Dalai Lama was pointing out that we are already on the path. We have always been on it. Our path is personally significant; we are the only ones who can walk it, taking the journey that we got. We are all, however, equally outfitted with what it takes to make the trek along that path to enlightenment. As my dream encounters suggest, it just takes utilizing a few practical tools in how to use what we innately possess: the means to achieving full awareness in our dreaming and waking lives.
In my dream encounters with the Dalai Lama, I was being reminded that we all face lessons in detachment in our daily lives, every day. The four quadrants of my dream mandala are the places that my personal challenges occur. But the Dalai Lama was also reminding me that we are all Buddha, going through the same kind of suffering that the Buddha went through in his 49 days of suffering. We must learn the same lessons that the Buddha learned, how to withstand the tension of what comes to us, investigate it—in a deep process like recapitulation, for instance—then let it go having learned what is most important. And then move on. There is always something new to move onto.
I learned, once again, that although the process is endless, the rewards are immediate. Each day, as I move around in my dreaming-waking mandala, I find that as I face what comes, the world without eventually changes, meeting me differently too. Where I am, so is the world. If I am in balanced calmness then I meet similar energy without. If I am avoidant, that too is what I encounter without, avoidant energy.
I have already constructed a magical wall...
One day I may find myself in the relationship quadrant and another day I may find myself in the outer world quadrant. It doesn’t matter where I find myself, the work is the same, to face what comes with awareness that my reason for being here is so that I may evolve. What must I face today and how will I face it? Will I remember that I already built a magical protective wall to hold in the energy that is important and to keep out that which is not?
I must remember that I am well prepared. All I really have to do is set my intent. And what was my original intent that brought the Dalai Lama’s energy into my dreaming-waking life? What it always is: to change. I find that there is really no other intent I need to put out there. Every day I ask to change, to keep changing, for I find there is no end to the magic and awe of life in change. “Let me change,” I ask. “Let me change.”
By constantly returning to my mandala, I am offered structure when I often feel that I have no structure, nowhere to turn, or no anchor. I do have it, a gift from the Dalai Lama himself. His own energy utilized far beyond his own physical body. That is his intent.
I sit in my mandala and set my intent to change. Try it. It really works!
Greet the world with calmness and the world will greet you back with calmness too!
Dear Jeanne and our Guides in Infinity: What message do you have for us today?
Do not be afraid to be who you are, to fully embrace your own spirit’s yearning for life and expression. Do not hold back the inner self, for that is the real you. Be who you are without fear and know that you, in full expression, will be received.
Embrace the true self more fully each day. As you grow and discover who you truly are, find solace in knowing that life experienced from true self is life enhanced and life enjoyed.
It is not an easy process to take inner self out into the world, but this is what the world now needs on a grand scale. If more people lived from their heart’s knowing, in balance with their head’s knowing, the world would have a chance to survive.
Are you saying that the world will not survive as it now is?
Greed and overconsumption, corruption and destruction, inconsideration and unkindness—all negative energies—continue to override good energy and the situation grows increasingly dire as time goes on.
There is not much time now for the goodhearted, compassionate ones to gain the upper hand. It is not for lack of trying or lack of intent, but only due to the imbalances the have had centuries of headway. Do not lose hope for change. The earth and nature itself have a way of taking care of such extremes of human indifference and ignorance, but do not wait for that to happen. Aid rightness by becoming a compassionate, honest, kind, and heart-acting person. It is the right way to be.
Find the means to rid the self of all negative feelings, emotions, thoughts, judgments, and ideas. Life is full of suffering, personal and impersonal, yet in shifting away from negative attachments life itself changes from one of suffering to one of joy and hope. Release the self from an old way of being present in life and be more open each day now to a new way of being present. Through a process of deep inner work and self-investigation work through the issues that bind you to an old self and old ideas of self and the world. That’s a very good beginning. Start with open eyes, open heart, and open head and ask for others to take full responsibility for themselves even as you take full responsibility for yourself. Be open to something new today by being different yourself, and see what happens.
Be as fully responsible for the self as the baby fox we watched in the woods, hunting and taking on life without fear.
Your journeys are marked so that you may learn new things. Study how your marks have come to guide you, the signposts of your life leading you to where you are now. Grant yourself permission to accept the journey you have been on as transformative, because it is! Now look to the next leg of it as transformative as well, and take it in full awareness.
Do you want your journey to be a sad and lonely one, or a journey of joy and love? It really is your choice, because how you choose to present yourself to the world depends on how the world presents itself to you. If you are angry the world will greet you with anger. If you are full of fear the world will become fear-infested. If you are happy the world will be a happy place. Test this theory for yourself and see what happens. Try a new method of greeting the day, and with a new intent set out on your day’s journey. Expect change by presenting a changed self and you will see that a changed world greets you back. It really does work!
Good Luck. I advocate taking control of your dreams by embracing your true self and asking that self to walk in your shoes now. With awareness be different, so that the world may also be different. Change will happen anyway, but each one of you can change things for the better, for man and earth, for self and other, for inner and outer balance. It’s your choice, but I contend that it is also your duty as a human being living during this changing time. Change the self, save the world from disaster. Don’t be afraid to live from the heart. Don’t wait another day. The time for change is NOW.
Thank you for this message! Most humbly channeled by Jan Ketchel.
We are challenged every day by forces that want our time, money, attention, and emotion. Jung focused on the inner culprit—the shadow, or unknown self—as the force that consumes a great deal of our daily energy and actions. The shamans of Carlos Castaneda’s lineage focused outwardly on the flyer, an entity that preys upon the tumult of human excess for its own sustenance and survival.
These are two descriptions of reality that coin metaphors to capture the predatory dimension of life. If we can acknowledge, that is, suspend judgment about this dimension of life, both within the self and in the world at large, we are freed to benefit from this relationship. The function of the shadow/flyer is to show us all of who we are. With this knowledge we can choose who we might become.
As we exit the season of excessive consumption we are shown our proclivity for sensual delight, whether we indulge or refuse it. Encounters with shadow/flyer may result in nausea, guilt, depression, insatiability, out-of-controlledness, and defeat.
Make no mistake about it; these are powerful entities with completely self-serving agendas. They can wreak havoc on our physical and emotional selves. However, their power lies solely in our ignorance or refusal to know the full truth about ourselves. If we can accept that we are sensual, emotional beings that need to find fulfillment in all that we are, we can begin to make room for all that we potentially are, in new balance.
Sometimes, we engage in excess to numb ourselves from parts of the self too painful or frightening to know. This is a defensive strategy that has its temporary value, however, it cannot hold back the deepest need to know and realize the full self. This activity points the way to recapitulation.
When we find ourselves caught in the daily round of repetitive Jekyll/Hyde behavior—fully convicted and repentant with the rising sun, only to be swept away again and again with the rising moon—we are awakened to the power of the shadow/flyer to control our lives in the absence of self-knowledge. As we awaken, we are freed to find new balance in our lives, perhaps a middle way; and with this awareness we are able to release the predatory entity of excess.
Mosquitoes are predatory flyers. However, they will move on to other prey when the stagnant pool that breeds them dries up. If we remain in stagnancy, we invite the shadow/flyer into our lives. It will feast upon us in our stagnancy, however, with the discomfort it creates we are invited to change.
Such is the nature of this symbiotic relationship between predator and prey. The predator becomes the beacon or instigator of change. Nonetheless, we must use this provocation to our advantage. That is, we must wake up, face the fullness of the self and move toward balance and fulfillment in life. Once we begin this process of change we release the predator because it no longer serves us. And we no longer serve it!
Moving on, into a new space. We have literally moved our office to the end of the hall, beyond our former location. See you there!
Chuck
We are in a time of extreme imbalance. Imbalance is the result of accumulation in excess. Accumulating in excess is the precursor of change. When a river swells to excess with accumulated rains, it must, of necessity, overwhelm its banks and flood the lands—a time of great change indeed!
The accumulation of angst through decades of stagnant repression has broken through to revolution in the Middle East Arab Spring. The accumulation of excessive wealth in the hands of the few has sprung another spring of protest upon the “wall” of Wall street.
The excessive stranglehold upon the economy—from whatever tainted, purist, or natural source—presses now upon the spirit to relinquish its attachment to materialism in excess as a source of meaning in life. The flood of deprivation drowning the planet is pressing human life into a new, sustainable balance.
There is no restraining the floods of change currently unleashed upon us. No corrective action can shore us up or return us to an old world balance.
We are in a different world now. The environment is rapidly shifting, the masses are wiser, more interconnected than ever, and the ruling platitude of unlimited growth and expansion has proven unsustainable.
We find ourselves truly at a major evolutionary juncture: Accumulation in excess as a way of life, as a planetary economy, is unsustainable. What will come next?
What is called for is a new paradigm that separates true needs from want, hunger from appetite. Accumulation in excess derives not from true need and hunger but from want and appetite. Want and appetite are abstractions, projections of value attached to things. From this projection derives the equation: more things = greater value. This is the equation of addiction. Addiction is accumulation in excess. Addiction is the human condition at this current evolutionary juncture.
The ethereal impulse behind addiction is spirit. Spirit seeks greater life, greater possibility. Spirit projected onto matter always seeks more for completion: more love, more alcohol, more numbness, more freedom, more adventure, more sex, more intensity, more money, more food, more, more, more.
Material balance
If we are to find safe passage through this time of great change we must satisfy spirit in spirit terms. We must lift our spirit’s longings off our material world and allow our beleaguered planet to restore its balance.
We are energetic beings. Energy is the home of spirit and spirit longing. The ultimate adventure that awaits us is our energy body, the body that lives on beyond the material world, the body that journeys in infinity. We all have access to it in this life, but only if we shift. The more we cycle in excessive accumulation of material things, the longer we remain in avidya—ignorance—yet to discover that all that glitters is not gold.
Fulfillment in this life requires us to explore and meet our deepest needs: material and spiritual. But if we refuse to recapitulate—where we free our spirit from our material experiences—we remain frozen, unable to find fulfillment in spirit or body. One cannot substitute for the other. A spirit being who shuns the body—a spirit in excess—results in a being in need of reincarnation. Likewise, a physical being who shuns the spirit will find itself steeped in addiction, bound to the spirit, projected onto matter.
With spirit soaring
Such is the condition of now. Accumulation in excess—unsustainable and uncontainable. The walls are coming down in floods of revolution. May we find safe passage as spirits soaring in material balance.
In dedication to the soaring spirit of Steve Jobs,
Chuck
