It matters what we think, for we draw to us what we think. Even thoughts left unspoken yet still swirling in the mind attract. Ideas we have about ourselves manifest as we continue to repeat them and believe them.
Spines and prickles, like so many unwanted thoughts… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Anything we focus on with intention, both good and bad, whether we are conscious of doing so or not, affects us. Sometimes our negative thoughts rule us to the point where we have no other sense of self except these negative ideas. And such negativity has very negative vibes attached to it.
Thoughts matter. You can prove this very simply. Think of something bad that happened or something that makes you sad. Notice how you feel. Now think of a good thing, something pleasant, a happy place to be. Notice how you feel.
We can consciously monitor our thoughts, by constantly bringing our attention back to our thoughts and asking: What am I thinking about right now? Is it a good thought or a bad thought? How does it make me feel? Does it bring me positive energy vibrations or negative energy vibrations?
If we decide we want to change something about ourselves, the first place to start might be in changing what’s going on in our heads. We can be sure that what we think finds a way in and affects us in some way, often in ways we are not even aware of. And a lot of thoughts just aren’t good ones!
A Meditation
A simple 2 to 5 minutes of quiet and focused breathing, with intention to change your thoughts and your energy too, might just begin the biggest change of your life. It’s very simple.
Focus on the heart center and breathe into your heart the following words, saying them softly or silently to yourself: “Goodness, kindness, compassion and love in.” Exhale through your heart center the words: “Goodness, kindness, compassion, and love out.”
Take another breath into your heart center and say the words: “I am breathing into myself goodness, kindness, compassion, and love.” Let the power of good words and good thoughts fill you. Ask them to remain present in you, even as you exhale.
As you breathe out through the heart center, say the words: “I am breathing out into the world goodness, kindness, compassion, and love.”
Then breathe in again, saying to yourself: “I am filling myself with goodness, kindness, compassion, and love.” Breathe out into the world with the words: “I am filling you with goodness, kindness, compassion, and love.”
The Mantra:
Goodness, kindness, compassion and love in.
Goodness, kindness, compassion, and love out.
I am breathing into myself goodness, kindness, compassion, and love.
I am breathing out into the world goodness, kindness, compassion, and love.
I am filling myself with goodness, kindness, compassion, and love.
I am filling you with goodness, kindness, compassion, and love.
Try some simple centering and calmness… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
A simple breath and a simple mantra, for a few minutes at a time, is a powerful way to change our thoughts and to also reap the rewards of positive thinking as well as the generosity of sharing our goodness, kindness, compassion, and love with the rest of the world.
We are all capable of doing this. No one is more or less equipped. Let your heart show you that this is true. You might even notice, as you breathe in and out through your heart center, that your head is pretty calm and quiet. And that’s really the message I wish to pass along today: Focus more on the heart, leave the head alone.
Breathing and sending good vibrations to everyone, Jan
Note: I am shifting, pulling away, after today’s blog, from writing every week. In the meantime, a new collaboration between me and Jeanne, the Soul Sisters as I have been calling us, is in the works, to be revealed in the coming weeks!
Like the changing colors of fall without, notice the changes within the self as well… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Here is a channeled message, quite hypnotic in its delivery. May it calm you and bring you closer to the wholeness that is you, to your creative self, and your spirit inside you. Have a great weekend.
Offered most humbly and with consideration for all that you are, Jan
Discipline is needed if we are to grow anything… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
We all need discipline. We all need focus. Discipline must be honed, given attention and nurtured. It requires that we commit to giving ourselves something else besides that which is readily available for the taking, easily acquiesced to, or simply given in to. It takes focusing our attention on achieving some kind of goal, whether it be to find a good or more fulfilling job, exercise, eat right, lose weight, connect with our deeper self, or simply to quiet the mind of its usual rumblings, rants, and worries.
Looking around at how we conduct our lives we can begin to see where discipline is needed. It’s really pretty easy. We just need to listen to what we say to ourselves and others all the time. I once had a running conversation with myself that went something like this: “I must get back to myself, try to find a way to reconnect with my creative self, my seeking self, my spiritual self. I feel so far away from her. How do I find her again?” I’d find myself saying this to others as well, that I was trying to find myself again, feeling that I had somehow gotten lost and disconnected from my true path.
It became clear, as I began a more concerted effort to find that lost self, that the inner workings of my mental status had taken me in directions I didn’t necessarily want to go, but eventually found to be the directions I needed to go in, all leading me forward. In my discomfort in life and my disconnect from my spirit I discovered all that I needed to set me on the path to self-discovery and reconnection with the real self that I felt was lost for so long. Indeed she was lost, not in the way I imagined but in a much more profound way. I discovered that she was totally disconnected from life in this world.
I discovered that I’d kept my spirit safely tucked away, protected, or so I thought. Little did I know that she was fed up with being locked away. Little did I know that her biggest desire was to actually live in this world that I found so frightening. It was her push for change that really set her, and me, free. And then, once I opened the door to connecting with her, I realized there was no stopping her. But I also discovered that I had to have some kind of control over the sudden rush of information that she presented me with, all the hidden things about myself that I’d let her keep secret, the things I didn’t want to know about.
In the shadows of my inner self I found my spirit waiting for me… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Rather than simply have control—I was already an expert at that—it became apparent that I had to become flexible so that the secrets could be revealed at the same time that I could remain comfortably available, present in my life, to work and be there for those who needed me. Thus began a practice of achieving balance, not just when I was in my regular yoga class or working on my recapitulation, but at all times, both awake and asleep.
I soon realized that I was on a path of profound change and that everything had to become part of that path of change. Gradually the discipline I was honing in my yoga practice seeped into all aspects of my life. I didn’t do yoga all day in the usual sense of doing yoga, but I began a new kind of spiritual practice. I intended that the sense of calmness and wellbeing that I experienced in yoga class accompany me throughout each day.
With constant attention on breathing and movement, on how I held myself and how my lungs filled with air or didn’t, I brought a new focus and stability into my life. Every day my yoga extended into more and more hours, as I simply told myself to do yoga all the time: to let my mind be empty, my body loose, my breath naturally flowing. As I focused on my breath going in and out, I began to be more physically present in the world. It became easier and easier to shift away from stagnancy, complacency, and old moods and habits.
This intentional discipline worked then and it still works today. Yoga all the time is still pretty much how I go about my daily life, deepening and bringing a most naturally acquired spiritual practice into every day life by simply noticing my breathing, bringing my attention constantly back into my body, making room for my spirit to accompany me on my journey all the time.
We can only learn by experience. Simply reading about, or thinking about doing something gets us nowhere; we must get experience by doing, and only in allowing ourselves to have experiences can we change. That change will permeate every aspect of who we are, our thoughts, our bodies, our spirits as we discipline ourselves in a most natural and focused way.
Let your spirit come out of the shadows and soar! – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Institute a spiritual practice that is simple, natural, and holistically healthy. Simply remind the self throughout the day to return attention to the body. Discipline the mind by focusing it on the body. How is it sitting or standing? How is it breathing? What is it thinking? What voice is speaking; is it saying what you want to hear? Are you in your body? Is your spirit present? Ask the two to go to work with you each day, to be present, attentive, moving and breathing together.
In getting up each morning with the intention of staying fully physically present in the body, a breathing, moving machine that has plenty of room for the spirit to fully live as well, we discover that it is the perfect vessel for transformation. In honing the body, with discipline and effort, we eventually advance into a new self-awareness that allows for new levels of experience where, without fear, we tread with joy and eagerness. This is doing yoga all the time, awareness of self as body, breath, and spirit.
Gently… like the surf coming in… – Photo by Chuck Ketchel
Flow with the breath, deeply inward.
Slowly release the constriction of body armor.
Open to the tide of the body ocean.
Ride its waves of healing motion.
Safely, with abandon.
I wake up each morning and directly out the window I see a triangular shape of branches. I see this every morning and every morning I wonder what it means. The triangle is important, significant, and its image hovers in my thoughts throughout the day. This morning I noticed something else. I saw a cluster of leaves and light creating a wheel at the top of the triangle in the way the light was hitting the tree. “Oh, the dharma,” I thought, the wheel representing the teachings of Buddha. I knew I was being asked, as I often am, to spread the dharma, that which I have been learning. “Okay,” I thought, “today is the day I write my blog. What will it be about?” And so, since then, it has evolved into the following message.
An old idea has come circling around again, into my conscious thoughts, appropriately so, for it is nature itself calling. It is Mother Earth calling out to the women of the world, asking us to remember who we are, for we are the source.
As a channel, I cannot ignore what comes through me; it would be neglectful and perhaps even disastrous to do so. I’ve had enough experience to know that it’s important to speak of what comes. I am not being inflated. I have learned over the past decade that what comes through me energetically is usually right on the money, it has value, and so I ask: Who are we? Do the women of the world truly value and utilize all that we hold inside us? Do the women of the world realize how intimately connected we are to nature, to the flow of energy, to the innate powers of healing and nurturance?
Thyme...from the earth...
Last night, as I was preparing dinner, Chuck asked: “Is this all ours?” Meaning, did we grow this? “Yes, it’s all ours,” I said. “Wow, you did this!” he said. “This is all you!” And I had to acknowledge that, yes, the food we are eating these days is all due to the efforts I put into making a garden so that we may eat directly from our own soil. At that moment, I realized that we all have the power within us to bring forth healthy goodness, to nurture ourselves and others in so many ways. Men and women alike, we are all capable of creating a beautiful, peaceful, healthy world, for I will not leave men out of my message today. However, I direct my words to women, because I feel that we have increasingly gotten distracted from, and discouraged from being, who we truly are.
In truth, we women are deeply connected to the source of all life, to the rhythms and flow of nature, to the moon and stars, to the deep rumblings of the earth, to the mystical, ethereal realms of the heavens. We are the beings who have the greatest opportunity to bring interconnectedness back into life, into everyday life. We are many, and we are fully capable of changing the world, but our power is, as of yet, largely untapped. Though many women are already aware and involved in awakening feminine energy, many more women need to get involved, in whatever way feels right and comfortable.
We all want the world to be a better, safer place. We can start to make that happen in small ways, simply by letting our spirits speak through us, by letting ourselves channel the good energy inherent in all of us. As we send our children and those nearest to us out into the world every day, as we meet people every day, we must not forget to tell them that they are good, kind beings, and that they should live their lives that way too, because life itself deserves this kind of energy, life is calling all of us to be this way.
We must remind ourselves of this goodness and kindness within ourselves and live it fully as well. We must all discover that we are all the same and that we all want the same things. Not money, not riches, not more stuff, but that we all want to love and be loved, to feel good about ourselves and others, to feel happy and contented. But how many people can really say that they are those things? How many people can truly say they are happy and contented in their lives?
Happiness, as we all know, does not come from having more. Greed, as we see all over the nation and the world, has wreaked havoc for decades, spoiling our earth, our water, our food, our bodies, our politics, our religions, our educational systems, and so much more. We are all out of balance because of greed, whether we have been directly involved or not.
Greed is definitely masculine energy unleashed, overpowering the feminine. It’s time for the feminine to rise up in a new way now, not in the masculine way, not by turning into that which we have learned does not work, but in an energetic way. We women, and men too, must turn to energetic interconnectedness on a conscious and deeply spiritual level, bringing change into the world in whatever way we have at our fingertips, for I believe we all have the power of interconnectedness at our fingertips right now.
The dharma...the teachings of spirit and life itself...
I realized that I made the choice many years ago to bring what I am learning to others, what I might call the dharma one day, which is really just about discovering what it means that we are all energetic, interconnected beings. I spend a good deal of my time each week writing blogs, not because my ego needs the work, but because the spirit inside me and the energy of that which I channel challenges me to be open and giving. After a lifetime of hiding behind shyness—which is another side of ego too, I might add—I now know that the rest of my life is taking me in a new direction and I am letting it guide me. I will not stand in its way. And I can tell you, it’s never too late to change. It’s really all about allowing the energy of change, connected to the flow of nature, the energy of all things, to take over, and daring to go with it.
I notice, especially over the past few months, how strikingly desperate we all are for change and how many people feel helpless, lost, and even hopeless in the face of what we have done to our planet and our species. Have we indeed turned into zombie creatures that just roam the earth destroying uncontrollably, without any connection to the sacredness of life? Have we come so far from caring about others that we cannot see that we are all in the same boat, desperately fighting for our next clean breath of air, our next sip of clear water, our next bite of pure food? Are we so far gone that we do not care if our earth gets fracked and drained of its resources, further destroying that which we have already destroyed to the point of no return?
So what do we do now? Where do we go from here? Well, I have a few ideas, simple ideas that I’ve been utilizing myself for a long time. I know they work. It all depends on who you are and how you personally decide to investigate changing your own lifestyle. Each of us must make personal decisions to change how we live in order for others to do the same. We can’t ask of others what we are not willing to do ourselves. But I can attest that making even simple changes begins a process of change. Keep in mind, however, that although change can happen on a simple scale, even the most simple of changes requires discipline, but not so much that balance is lost. Balance, as we see in nature, is of utmost importance.
Learning to do simple meditation on the conditions of the earth and humanity, breathing in the pain and destruction that we see and breathing out healing, nurturing energy is extremely easy. Everyone breathes. So what if we all set the intention to breathe in a new way, asking that each inhale we take be a breath focused on what is wrong in the world and each exhale be a breath of healing energy? Can we do it?
Try it. Set the intent that each normal breath, whether consciously focused on or not, have meaning. Set the intent for the self first, then for those closest, then for the world. Ask that the energy of healing and nurturance flow through you and that it heal you, those closest to you, and that it flow beyond you to the rest of the world. Watch what happens as you set this intent and then go into your day and just breath naturally.
We all have it...Can we dare to use it for good, for all beings?
For a more focused meditation, breathe in personal issues and conflicts and breathe out healing, for the self and others. Breathe in fear and greed, and breathe out compassion and balance. This is a very simple energetic act of kindness, love, and compassion for all beings. Breathe in sorrow and grief, and breathe out happiness and contentment, for self, those closest, even those you are at odds with, and then to the greater world, and see what happens.
To those who are gardeners, as I am, send this same kind of good and nurturing energy into your soil, even into the pots on your balcony or deck. Ask the earth to heal by spreading healing energy from your little plot of ground, down into its interconnected byways, spreading to your neighbors’ yards and beyond. Ask your earth to provide you with what you need to heal your body and your soul and ask that it go outward to others as you garden, as you put your hands into it, as you walk barefoot upon it.
Do this in water as well. If you have access to streams, river, or ocean, ask the waters to interconnect with healing energy, bringing it far beyond your own dipping spot. You can even do this in the shower and bathtub. Send your healing energy around the world. In these simple askings—in intending that the air we breathe, the earth we grow our food in, the water we drink, be interconnected channels of energy—we implement an energetic intent to change, offering it to everyone.
As simple as these things may seem, as naive as they may sound, anyone who has experienced energetic interaction knows that this is not hogwash. It is what the great healers, saints, and holy people have been teaching us forever. Love heals, love changes, love is the way. Love begins within each of us. It is feminine energy, the deep pool residing inside all of us, waiting to be tapped into, not just in women, though I send a plea to all women to return to it now and use it to change the self, and then the world. We all have this source within us, and though it may feel distant and unfamiliar, I ask you to tap into it again. Like an innocent child, bring it back into your life.
It has become increasingly clear to me that all of us women must step up now. We must take over the energy of change, shifting it in a new direction. As much as the men of the world have struggled to change the world, they too must admit that things are not looking too good. We have to all tap into the feminine source now, and return to our deeper roots. We must all become humanitarians and utilize our full human potential to love, to heal, to evolve our species to a new level of interconnectedness.
Breathing for all of you, with humbleness and love,
Jan
