Tag Archives: balance

Readers of Infinity: Seek Balance

December 10, 2012 Jan Leave a comment

Photo by Jan — Seek to balance the self…

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

Notice polarity and tension, notice imbalance in your lives and seek to remedy these most unnatural states of being. Notice how your lives present you with so many options and yet how you gravitate to the same ones.

Becoming part of the natural balance of all things requires that awareness of self and surroundings be keen, that your place in the grand scheme of things be a priority. In this adjustment of self in the universe—in your own home universe of body, mind, and spirit first—you will eventually be led to a new balance in relationship to all other beings and the universe-at-large. Relationship that is mature, grounded in nature, and that flows through you in a life that is lived in simple balance—as you learn how to both give and take within the natural balance of all things—is the key to happiness upon that earth.

All beings will benefit if each one of you correct your personal imbalances—your extremes, your polarities. With your desires checked, your inner balance calm and accepting of all you do as part of a process of growth, so will your journey through life be rewarding. This process entails constantly learning what it means to be in balance with all living beings, while at the same time letting go of self-discrimination and judgment, freeing the self of old ideas, while simultaneously accepting full responsibility for the journey you are on.

Seek balance in the middle way, traveling the middle road, taking the middle path, for that is where the Earth itself constantly seeks its own balance. In between birth and death, between light and dark, between near and far, between inner and outer is there always a midpoint where all contentions, disagreements, externalized projections and internalized disputes will find a place of rest and contemplation.

This place of rest upon the middle road offers mature and sober distance from the polarity of everyday contention—inner and outer—offering clarity and insight not otherwise achieved, and thus the balance required for full commitment to a path of growth and change in balance with all living things may be gained.

Be conscious of the self today as you experience the energy outside of you. This is the place to start. The outer energy may be experienced as quite powerful, and so balance will be found in turning deeper inward, as you ask the self why you feel drawn toward that outward pull, knowing full well that it is extreme and will only lead to imbalance once again. In inward contemplation will you discover that the outer tension will soon dissipate and balance be regained.

Gaining personal inner-outer balance is the first step to gaining better balance overall and this is what I suggest doing today: Question everything you are pulled to, pausing for a moment to determine if it is right or wrong for you to engage in. Make your decisions based on what you know already by your previous experiences and on what comes to you during this pause. This is where balanced guidance comes from, from deep within the self. Though its voice may be hard to hear at first, the longer you sit with it, the better you will hear its words of wisdom.

You will experience a new mature self in balance with nature and all living things more often as you do this practice. The energy of this new mature self has the potential to spread into the lives of all other living beings upon that planet, for you are all part of the greater universe. Your true wisdom lies in gaining balance so that you may tap into its healing power and its knowledge of the far greater unseen energy of a universe in balance, all aspects traveling along the same middle road.

Thank you to Jeanne for this most inspiring message, especially as we come into a time that is traditionally a time of extremes, with overconsumption and overspending being the old way. The world needs us all to do something different now. What will our choices be as individuals and as a whole? I think it matter greatly.

Most humbly channeled with my deepest gratitude to Jeanne and all of you for being part of this journey. -Jan

Messages from Jeanne

Readers of Infinity: Behave Differently Now

November 26, 2012 Jan Leave a comment

Here is the weekly channeled message from Jeanne. May you all find it comforting, guiding, and helpful in our challenging, changing times.

Behave differently now. It is time to be openhearted, considerate, kind and compassionate, not just within but also without. It is good to know right from wrong, good from bad, but it is far better to act with this knowing foremost in thought, word, and deed.

All who reside upon that earth at this time, a time of great turmoil and change, must turn from the distractions of want, desire, greed and overconsumption, and turn instead toward a leaner yet softer persona. This more gentle aspect of humanity must come into play now if all is to be accomplished that will lead to lasting change and a new paradigm.

Life must be struck down—life as it is now expressed and grasped at—for there is no longer room for more, there is only the necessity of less. If less is not embraced, less will be presented, and thus less will be forced upon you and less will become the norm. Thus, that which is necessary will ensue—balance will ensue—for that is what is desperately needed and called for upon that planet.

It is time to behave differently, to grasp at deeper meaning and greater awareness, and not just for the few but for the many. Departure from an old way of thinking and behaving is the first step in this much-needed change. As mentioned, if not activated on a personal level, then activation will come from outside, but in reality it will be reverberating inside each one of you in some deep way.

Learn that less is more, that balance is crucial; inside and outside the self, inside and outside the home, inside and outside of everything that you live, encounter, and trust. Balance is all that matters now—simple, lean balance.

Begin to pare down your individual greed and consumption, your individual desires and wants, by questioning the way you feel pulled, the way you are drawn, and the way you are also repelled. Study your world now with thoughts of balance, less, and inner and outer simplicity as your guiding tenets. In this manner begin to behave differently now.

Slow down. Think. Feel. Take less. Give more. Be good. Be kind. Be compassionate. To self and other extend these most gracious human attributes and know that you are participating in the change that is sweeping across your world, far and wide, yet near and dear as well.

Let go of what needs to be let go of, that which you no longer need or wish to carry. Let go of angers, resentments, and old pains that are not worthy of life-giving energy. Let go of that which takes you from your path of growth. Turn toward a simple life now. See that you do not need so much, that life itself offers what you need, and that there is enough to be had by all.

Return to balance within the self and thus return the world to balance, reducing negativity, disease, war, disturbing energies, conflicts within and without. Eradicate that which is no longer helpful and nurture only the positive. This is the side that needs attention now. Think and act and do that which is positive, right, and good. Although such positive actions may be painful to execute, so are they right, and this you all know.

Carving by Jeanne & Photo by Jan — Sense the positive…

Be responsible for changing the behaviors of the self. This is how to start moving in a new direction—the direction that is now needed—from gluttony to simplicity, from the negative to the positive, from bad to good, from dark to light. However you choose to see it, know that it is time to go deeper into your personal process of change.

I leave you with these thoughts today, asking you all to be responsible adults, as if your life depended on it because, in truth, it does—it always did and always will. Be fully responsible for the self. That is where to begin. I give you enough to go on, now take up the cause of change and begin to alter the self. The universe is waiting to take up this cause of change in a positive direction, so know that you will be met with energetically resonant energy in accompaniment. You will be well supported and well met. All you need to do is look in a new direction now, with new eyes and a new heart. It’s that simple.

Channeled with love for you all.

Messages from Jeanne

Readers of Infinity: On The Razor’s Edge

September 10, 2012 Jan Leave a comment

There is a great propensity for success, for change to happen now on a greater level, for real change to take place upon that earth and within a great many individuals as well. For it is only with change within the individual that change on a mass level will occur, as you well know. However, one must be alert to the choices being made. Too often the dullness of everyday life wins out over the magic of the work and possibilities that lie within.

Be aware of your personal choices. Watch how they affect your physical and mental prowess. Be alert to the moment when decisions arise, when you are asked to direct your energy.

What is the proper use of your energy? This is the question to not only ask mentally, but physically as well. Direct the self to be thoughtful and careful and—with concern for the delicate balance between the world without and the world within—choose wisely how best to use your time, your energy, and your life. With concern for duration of life upon that earth as your sobering first thought, choose how to use that finite time to your best advantage.

Present advice is to urge humanity toward remaining alert, for the dullness of life so easily sweeps over the masses and then, no matter how hard some individuals work at changing themselves and the world, there will unfortunately be no greater mass change. And, as you all know, mass change is now necessary.

Mass change, in the right direction, is what the world needs and those who are really awake and aware of this necessity must stay awake. Choose to walk the razor’s edge of awareness, staying alert to the machinations of the mind as well as the energy outside of you. Be alert to what, how, and when it pulls you in one direction or another and make wise personal choices.

Remain balanced through this time of decision-making. Precision of timing is crucial; attention to choice and the best use of personal energy are the most important factors now. Awareness must be honed and kept in good working order for progress to stick. Good Luck!

Channeled with love.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Disruption Leads To Mature Balance

August 29, 2012 Jan Leave a comment

We work in the garden in the early morning, weeding and clearing the summer’s growth. Time for fall plantings now. Time for a change. The energy is with us as we work in the early morning light, in the cool air and companionable silence. Our task done, we prepare breakfast and sit on the deck, content in our togetherness. Suddenly I have an urge. I want to go out to a restaurant that I like. It has a nice outdoor garden.

“Why don’t we go there for dinner tonight?” I suggest.

We discuss the possibility. After a while it doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. I acquiesce to the energy that says to take it slow, be patient, and stay put. It’s a day to be calm and to rejuvenate.

We sit and read. The air is calm, the day sunny and still. The birds are busy around us. I hear a fluttering of wings overhead and a zinging sound, like a jolt of electricity. Something has just been caught midair, right above our heads. A bird flies off with something big in it’s beak. I worry that it might be the hummingbird that had just hovered busily nearby.

We read for a few more minutes. Suddenly Chuck is restless. “I have such creative energy brewing inside me,” he says. “I have to do something with it.” I wonder if I can match it, if I can join him in this creative spurt, but no, my energy is utterly calm. I just want to sit and read. Chuck heads off to do some more yard work, shaping the hedges and ornamental trees, a good project for such energy.

While he works in the yard, I read and contemplate the energy of the day. A hurricane is brewing, and the Republicans are gathering for their convention, saying they will go ahead with it no matter what. I sense masculine energy stirring all around me. I don’t get attached, but stay in my inner calmness. I remember my own pull earlier to go out into the world and do something, yet I know I made the right decision to stay at home today.

Soon Chuck returns, his energy spent. Contented and calm, he sits beside me and we enjoy a quiet few hours. The energy stirs repeatedly throughout the day, however, both inside us and outside us and we must make decisions about whether to acquiesce to it or wrestle it down. It just seems to be the way it is at the moment.

Things progress, the hurricane continues to gather energy, the Republicans begin their convention, the masculine energy continues to stir. Aggressive and controlling, I see it playing out in many instances over the next few days. Suddenly, I realize it isn’t masculine energy at all that I’ve been feeling all around me, but feminine energy, the energy of nature, the creative unleashed.

My urge to go out to dinner was the romantic feminine stirring in me. The bird snatching food from the air above our heads was Mother Nature in raw form. Chuck’s creative urge was also the feminine urge to give birth to some new creation. The feminine was stirred in us throughout the day, offering the possibility of new adventures, new desires, new experiences.

Now I understand the energy of the hurricane as it slowly amassed and headed into land as the creative force of the feminine unleashing, no man or woman able to hold such power back. This got me to thinking about whether or not we really have any control at all, over anything. Are we just fooling ourselves in thinking we make our own decisions? Are we all just subject to acquiescence, in spite of our best efforts to control and direct our lives?

I dream. I have no control in my dreams. The feminine energy of the unconscious emerges and takes me on nightly adventures while my ego is asleep. Ego is masculine; the controlling self in everyday life, thinking it has the upper hand, thinking it’s in charge. But is it really? I don’t think so. It tries hard, it asks me to conform and abide by its tenets, yet underneath other truths have been stirring for a long time now, truths that I have learned to pay attention to. And I know from paying attention to those inner truths that I am more like the hurricane, that I am nature, the creative.

We are all this creative force, yet we must be accountable for it within ourselves if we are to live as mature beings. I must not let the creative feminine energy rule me anymore than I let the masculine force rule. I must learn to acquiesce to each of them when appropriate so that I am not overwhelmed or controlled by either. This is where I believe we do have power, the power to gain balance over the powers within us that constantly seek expression. This is how we become mature spiritual beings able to flow in the universe.

If we allow ourselves to be overly controlled by either force, we are not only out of balance, but we are not our true mature and evolving selves either. We become automatons to the powers that be, to the outside energy and the inside energy. In order to gain equilibrium within, we must attentively weigh the energy outside of us, making decisions on how to act and how we want to be in the world.

Do I want to control everything in my life? No, I don’t. I want to be available to flow with what comes, but I also know from previous experiences that I don’t need to be taken over anymore either. However, it’s appropriate at times to be overtaken, to allow both the masculine controlling energy and the unleashed feminine to teach us what we must learn. And so I have allowed myself to indulge in both kinds of energy, sometimes unknowingly and often intentionally. But there comes a time when it’s enough. There comes a time for living in the world in balance, as a mature and whole being.

As human beings, we have the opportunity to make choices. We are surrounded by nature in the raw, we have it inside us, and yes, it can unleash at any time. But in mature balance we learn to detach from and attach to it as feels right. We make decisions based on what is right for us at the moment. We can choose to maintain the calmness and contentedness we have so desperately sought and fought for our entire lives.

In always saying no, we shut the door to life. In always saying yes, we leave it open to being overwhelmed by life. When in balance we offer ourselves possibility, the door always half open, and yet our choices become ones made in awareness, knowing what we are choosing and why. In choosing recapitulation—yes, I do have to mention it because it’s my life’s work and offering—we allow ourselves to gain the mature balance that leads to calmness, contentment, and access to the awareness of knowing what is right for us, at all times.

So, my lessons this week have been a growing awareness of what it means to be in mature balance, which is really a constant shifting in awareness, as if one were on a balance beam, making slight adjustments in inner balance to meet the outer energy that seeks always to upset the ego-dominated self. It’s just the way it is; the job of the creative feminine energy is to make new life, both within and without, and new life only comes from disrupting stasis. We all need a jolt of raw nature every now and then to catapult us into new life.

Here’s hoping that Hurricane Isaac, the feminine unleashed, doesn’t do too much damage and that it leads us all to opportunity for new mature life. And here’s to my lovely daughter who is living through it at this very moment, in her little house in New Orleans. May everyone be safe.

Sending love,
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Rejecting The Chaos

August 15, 2012 Jan 1 Comment

We gather our books, our notebooks and writing pens, and go into retreat. We leave everything else behind. Perhaps we take a cup of tea, a jug of water, an apple or two, but little else. We leave the phones, laptops, all forms of communication with the outside world, and disappear. No one knows where we are. For the time we’ve allotted ourselves, we are free.

We sit amongst the catbirds, quietly conversing or silently reading. We meditate, or perhaps even doze in our chairs. A doe and her two fawns come out of the woods and walk past. We are so invisible in our intent to retreat that they take no notice of us. We are present yet not present.

We reject all attachments, including the needs of those closest to us. On another day of retreat we sit in our canoe on calm waters. We drift, going nowhere. We let the world rumble by, all its troubles and turmoils, all its fears and desires, all its crisis and calamities. We are free.

We know what awaits us upon return to the reality of our world, yet we allow ourselves to turn from it as often as possible. In this manner we offer ourselves balance, we create a container in which to nurture our spirits. We offer ourselves sacred space in the midst of everyday life. We lift the veil of one world and enter another, rejecting the chaos that constantly seeks attachment. In the simplest of ways, at little or no cost, we seek retreat as often as possible.

Perhaps we take a walk at dawn, or at midnight. Perhaps we go to a movie. Perhaps we sit on our deck as the sun rises. Perhaps we build a fire and watch its sparks light the night. Perhaps we take a friend out to dinner and sit in a calm garden cafe. Perhaps we take a yoga class, or hike along a new path. All of these things offer retreat from the energy of the world constantly stirring around us.

Part of going into retreat, part of disappearing for a few hours or a few days, requires careful planning. It requires honing detachment by setting limits on the self and the outside world. It requires that we reject the chaos. It requires that we leave everything behind that might interrupt our retreat, anything that might interfere with our solitude. Often enough it requires leaving behind worry and fear, leaving behind the thoughts and ideas that we are needed, that we are important, that the world might collapse if we are not available every minute of every day to those who need us, want us, rely on us for whatever reasons. Going into retreat requires honing nerves of steel while simultaneously extending a tenderness toward the self that we might not ordinarily feel. Foremost, going into retreat requires rejection of all outside energy.

In turning inward, in going into retreat, in rejecting the chaos of everyday life, we learn how to care for ourselves. We learn how to detach from the critics, whether outside of us or inside. We learn how to suspend judgment: what others might think of us, what we might think of us, how the world judges us every day.

In successful retreat, we achieve calmness and contentedness. Our minds slow down; our hearts slow down. We become better givers, lovers, kinder more gentler people, because we give to ourselves, love ourselves, are kind to ourselves. In desiring to be giving beings we must first learn how to give to ourselves. In desiring to become more compassionate beings we must first experience what that means, and the best way is to practice compassion toward ourselves. In desiring to be loved, we must first learn how to love ourselves.

If we are in the midst of painful recapitulation we have already learned how to leave the world behind, for we do it every time we go into a memory. We know how to retreat, but it’s vastly important that we give ourselves sacred space for healing retreat during recapitulation too. In small increments we must learn how to care for ourselves, even though we are not used to caring about ourselves at all.

Recapitulation is really a time of retraining our minds and bodies, of reawakening our spirits, and remaking ourselves into a different being altogether. It’s a time of rephrasing how we think and speak, recreating our life styles and agendas to fit the changing beings we are in the process of sculpting. And so, even when deep into painful recapitulation—especially when one is in deep painful recapitulation—one must take responsibility for occasionally pulling out of the chaos and advancing the healing process. By finding some means of rejecting the chaos—however captivating it may be—one establishes balance.

Keeping in mind that the intent of recapitulation is to heal, the balance comes in learning healing activities and skills, and actually practicing them. Nothing will change if one does not act on what one is learning during recapitulation. This entails regularly stepping back from the intensity of the process and assessing the progress made. This entails reevaluating the self, appreciating the self in a new way, actually rewarding the self for the difficult work that has been accomplished. This entails reframing the state of one’s mind by offering it positive accolades as one rejects the old negative thought language. This entails learning how to be gentle, kind, and compassionate with the self, and eventually learning how to love the self.

Although recapitulation is an ongoing process of change, there will always be times when it is appropriate to reject the chaos of recapitulation—even if only for a few minutes at a time. In such moments of respite—think calm retreat—one builds stamina and regains balance that may have been lost during intense memory recapitulations. One learns how to detach from energetic attachments, nurturing one’s own reclaimed energy in the process, experiencing small doses of freedom along with a newly unfolding self.

A young woman told us of losing her phone and how free she felt. Sitting in a circle of friends, she noticed how everyone had their head down, looking at their phones, texting, reading, only peripherally attached to the conversation of the group. In that moment she clearly understood the addiction that she normally carried in her own pocket, the addiction to constantly needing to be in touch, to not missing something, to having everything at her fingertips. In that moment she saw her friends as slaves and she experienced her own freedom. Forced to break her own habit, she experienced a sense of relief, for a moment glad she had lost her phone. For a moment she basked in her own place of calm retreat.

No matter who we are, where we are in our lives, no matter what is happening, we must learn to take moments of retreat. We must learn how to reject the chaos, turn from our addiction to the chaos of life, and take responsibility for our spirits needs for calmness and balance. We must learn to nurture ourselves. It’s not that hard to do.

Love to you all, as you find calm retreat today.

Rejecting the chaos,
Jan

Riverwalker Press