Tag Archives: change

A Day in a Life: It’s A Step-By-Step Process!

Every morning the sheep leave the barn...they head out into the field. Is that fulfilling enough? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Every morning the sheep leave the barn…
they head out into the field.
Is that fulfilling enough?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

If we are to live as conscious, alert beings we must find out who we truly are. If we are to get ourselves out of our stuck places, we must discover how we got stuck to begin with. If we are to be energetically aware and alive, we must free ourselves from old energy that has attached to us and constantly drains our energy.

We might not even know that our energy is being drained, or that we are not fully consciously present and aware until someone points it out to us. We might not know that we are energetically depleted either until we fail or fall down, with absolutely no energy left to go on. Often our ego rushes in to defend us, as we point out to the Truthsayer how perfect we really are, how on top of everything and in control we feel, how we know ourselves better than they do and how impertinent they are to point out to us something that just isn’t so!

It isn’t easy to face what lies at our deepest core and directs our lives, old defenses and personality traits from childhood perhaps that still rule. When we feel stuck, it’s pretty certain that one of those old powerful allies will rear it’s head, asking us to call it forth again, to save us from having to be challenged. Far better to stay the same, it says, safer then. But we are adults now. We’ve all grown up and had to do adult things and so we must fully embrace our adult selves if we are to face our old childhood allies.

In addition, once we realize that we are here to evolve on our spiritual journey, to finally awaken and release ourselves from the cyclical suffering of life on this earth—from samsara as the Buddhists call it—we are going to be challenged to break out of and through our old patterns and behaviors. Once we begin the journey of awareness those challenges will come consistently and unrelentingly, often at the most inopportune of times. Our adult self must stay fully present in the face of those old allies, tell them that the gig is up, that we are leaving them behind, intending to move on now. But how do we do that without suffering even more?

We all land somewhere, but where we go from there is up to us... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
We all land somewhere,
but where we go from there is up to us…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Well, it’s a step-by-step process, a one-day-at-a-time kind of thing. It’s painful; no doubt about it. But as we string together those individual days they begin to link into a growing span, a little more golden each day. Over time we begin to see positive change in our attitudes and we notice that we make different choices. Our childhood allies don’t pop up so often and our adult self is more flowing and eager for life. We begin to experience ourselves as changing beings. Eventually a whole new lifestyle develops. Suddenly, one day we realize that we have actually changed a lot! We are no longer the being we once were.

In taking our small steps each day, we are choosing to take a new path, and that alone is good work! We can choose to take that first step right now, or we may decide to wait for the next lifetime. We may even decide that we haven’t fully achieved our highest potential yet. We may desire to come back to fulfill it in our next life.

I once met a woman who discovered a new part of herself late in life. She had healed herself on many deep levels, in the process discovering so many alternative and energetic healing modalities that she had never previously been exposed to. She fully embraced herself as a reincarnated being and knew that she should strive to evolve beyond this realm, yet she had finally discovered something that fit her like a glove. She realized her greatest potential as a human being was as of yet unfulfilled. She decided that she wanted to live another life, and so she fully intended to return as an energetic healer, to help others find their energetic connection too.

She was 84 when I met her more than a decade ago, with a brightness in her eyes and a glowing spirit that could not wait to come back. She declared this with such unbending intent. I lost touch with her, but I hope she fulfills that intent. It felt right when she stated it, and it still feels right. It’s the kind of healing energy the world needs more of!

In the meantime, we all have choices to make. Are we ready to become as aware as that woman became. Are we ready to fully explore our own greatest potential, to declare that we are unfulfilled, or actually quite fulfilled? Are we ready to accept our appointment with what comes next with such unbending intent? Is this lifetime enough; will it be our final one? To find out we must face our deepest truths—that which keeps us stuck—and take back our energy.

The fearless little ant... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
The fearless little ant…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

It takes gumption and a good amount of fearlessness, but we all have those qualities inside us. We just have to embrace them, one step and one day at a time. In clearly differentiating between and separating our childhood allies from our adult self, we take the first step on our journey to wholeness and fulfillment.

Always taking that next step forward, wondering where it will lead me today,
Jan

A Day in a Life: Time To Make The Shift

The golden moment has arrived! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
The golden moment has arrived!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

I don’t really know that much about astrology. I follow a few blogs, but I get lost in the planets, in the alignments and polarities. I find the details mind-boggling. It’s often like reading a foreign language. But even so, I know what I feel.

I woke up in the middle of the night. I was awake during the moment of the cardinal grand cross, a rare four planet pattern that occurred last night. As I lay awake, I knew it was time to make further inroads into the changes that I’ve been instituting over the past several years. “Now,” I thought to myself, “is the time to fully make the shift.”

Life challenges us all the time. Life asks us to make decisions, to face our difficulties, and to keep growing. I just have to look out the window and I know that facing my challenges is in alignment with nature, planetary or otherwise. Nature dies and then pushes through. The grass grows, the flowers bloom, the leaves appear once again.

I notice the signs that come to greet me, underscoring this time of shift. A butterfly flies over our heads as we sit in the yard, a little early we think. Two moths appear at the window, right in front of my eyes. I cannot fail to take in the significance; spirit is calling.

Spirit is always calling. As Chuck and I were discussing this morning, we are all born equipped with it. Then we lose it. We lose touch with our innocence, our connection to the wonder and the magic, but then we spend our lives looking for it. Sometimes we are doing this with purpose and at other times we do it unconsciously. But spirit calls out to us in so many ways, asking us to come back to our equipment again, that which we were born with, our connection to the energy of everything. In answering the call, we are declaring that we are ready, knowing full well that changing ourselves will take work. We put on our warrior self and we fight alongside our spirit self as we break through old worlds and old behaviors, old patterns that have kept us in bondage, so that we can achieve our own perfect grand cross.

When I began my recapitulation, it was really because my spirit was calling so loudly that I could not ignore it. Following that call meant the collapse of everything, but it also meant the beginning of new life. In shift, in change, there is death and rebirth, breaking apart and building up. Endings and beginnings are bundled up, tangled up in the process of change. Gradually the destruction turns to construction, as new structures based on spirit begin to take over and the new world that we’ve been working on for so long finally begins taking shape.

The feeling is that now is the time to implement that which has been taking shape, to not only notice the signs of spirit but act on them. We all have something inside of us, some goal, some desire, some creative urge, our spirit calling out to us in some way. My spirit once called out to me because it was dying, but now it is alive and well, living a full and productive life, but still it calls out to me: Time to go deeper still! And so I pay heed. “Yes,” I say, “time to go deeper still!”

It’s time for all of us to let spirit take us more fully into experiencing just what “deeper still” means. I’m game!

Change is good,
Jan