Here is a nice cheerful message from Jeanne today, inviting us to let ourselves enjoy the energy of change. Here is what she says:
What’s your energy like today? – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Today is a good day to take stock of where you are. Contemplate where you are in your lives and how far you have actually come on your journey of change. Be honest with the self in your assessment. Notice your energy level. Have you gained back some of your personal energy as you have worked on the self? Have you let some things go that have drained your energy? Have you learned when it is appropriate to say yes and when to say no? Do you then act on that knowing?
Be kind to the self as you do your personal assessment—don’t be too hard! Accept your truths and resolve to move on with renewed intent. Simply allow the self to be fallible. The honest truth is that you are human and so you will be as human as you need to be. But once you realize this humanness, and once you fully see where you are caught, the next move on your part is to act in a new manner.
That is what must happen now. You must all act in a new manner today. The energy of the universe supports all such acts of change. Your efforts will show immediate results. You will be gifted the energy to continue your evolving journey with new intent, hope, and compassion. New insights will arise to guide you. I suggest that you grab them and go with them. They will take you where you need to go next.
Open your hearts to the self and others, and always remember that Everything Is Possible! Let some of that possibility in today, even if only a bit. It will make your day a lot brighter. I guarantee!
I pull this card a lot… It’s always deeply meaningful… From the Thoth Tarot Deck, the 2 of Disks.
I go to the Tarot for advice and guidance. “What is the most important thing to write about in my blog today?” I ask. I shuffle the deck. Holding the stack of cards against my heart, I pull a card, the 2 of Disks: Change. I read that this card represents external change. It’s about achieving external balance by remaining always fully aware that change is constant, cyclic, unending. The number 2 is also significant, implicating that we must change now, within a matter of a few minutes, days, weeks or, at the most, months. There is no time to waste.
Change comes to aid us on our journeys, to help us evolve, to spur us out of our inertia. And so I must ponder what this card is trying to alert me to on this day especially, as I am poised to write something that others will read. I say that not in self-importance, but only in humility, for I am aware that words have power. Even my own words have power; all words do. They can inspire or they can hurt.
In the wake of the bombings at the Boston Marathon on Monday, I am aware of goodness, selflessness, courage, heroism. I am also aware of evil, hatred, fear, anger. This is a sensitive time for us. We are hurt, confused, afraid. We want to blame. We want there to be a bad guy, a villain. We ask why, why would someone do such a thing? We feel the pain of others, the maimed, the lost, the grieving. We want answers and yet the answers are slow to come. We might even ask: “What would I have done?”
The 2 of Disks asks us to change ourselves, to get ourselves in balance with nature. It asks us to enact external change that will be lasting, based on what we know about human nature and the cyclicity of nature itself. It asks us to become responsible for change in our lifetime—now.
The symbol on the Tarot card is the oroborus, the snake eating its tail, the figure eight, representing infinity. It also represents the repetition of behaviors and habits internally that keep us static externally. The card suggests that it’s time to question our deeper selves as to why these things keep happening, the mass shootings and bombings as well as the other horrors: the raping of woman and girls, the starving of children, the insatiable greed. Why do we keep hurting each other? Why are our ideologies more important than our truths? Why will we not stand up for what is truly right? These are the questions from the oroborus.
From the reactions of people at the bombing scene it’s apparent that we care deeply about each other. Who knows, perhaps one of the injured was the bomber, unknowingly aided by a good samaritan, simply because it’s in our human nature to help one another. No one questioned if the injured were worthy of saving, they simply acted to help other human beings in pain. On that day there were many actively engaged in enacting the oath of humanness that we all took upon entering this life, the oath of affection.
I must look for myself reflected in this image… I know I’m there somewhere… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, the Golden Rule says. It’s good to see that it’s still alive. But why do so many of us turn our faces and run from horror, rather than look it in the eye, take in the gory details, knowing that we too will suffer and die one day? Why are so many of us afraid of truly living our lives to the fullest? Why are we so afraid to meet our fellow human beings face to face? Why are so many of us afraid to look at our own deepest fears?
I think these are some of the things we are being asked to confront today. As the Shamans of Ancient Mexico state: We are beings who are going to die. Why is this so hard for us to think about? Why do we pretend that we alone are invincible when we are shown every day, from around the world and in our own country, that death will come. We must use death this time as an advisor, this is what the 2 of Disks is saying.
We must dare ourselves to take in the grisly truth. We must look at what has happened, knowing full well that we are not immune, and let it shake us awake. The pictures of horror must burn holes in us so that we do not forget what we human beings are capable of, both the good and the evil.
Perhaps we have come so far from our true humanness that we must be shocked awake before we will change how we perceive the rest of humankind and the world we all share. If we Americans are to change, we must first recognize that we are the same as all other human beings around the world. We are no more or less than the good and evil that resides in the people of the Middle East, India, Africa. We are no more or less human than our staunchest opponents, our perceived enemies, than those who wish to destroy us. We all have some aspect of aberrant behavior that rules us. We are all in need of balance, and external change is what brings that to us. Just as the seasons change, bringing the balance that nature needs in order to regenerate, so do we need external shocks in order to change too. This, I believe, is what the 2 of Disks implies, that external change will come to rock us back into true balance.
We are all both light and dark, yin and yang, good and evil, etc. – Photo by Jan Ketchel
As the 2 of Disks implies, we are all the oroborus, cyclic beings, endlessly eating our tails. We must accept this. We are all going to die. And so we must accept what comes from without to help us change within, so that change can happen without that is lasting and good. We must once again retake the oath of humanness and truly live as affectionate beings, without self-importance, knowing that we are all capable of the most horrific of deeds, but also the deepest affection. This is the balance of the 2 of Disks.
We must seek balance without, in all ways, now. But we must also constantly deal with the evil bombers within. The shamanic practice of recapitulation offers a method of deep self-investigation that leads to selflessness and true affection. As we constantly recapitulate, we shed our fears and lose our personal self-importance. If we do this as individuals, our nation may lose its fears and self-importance as well. If we recapitulate until we are nothing more than beings who are going to die, when it comes our turn to act externally, only the affectionate beings that we truly are will immediately respond.
Offered in humility, with thanks to the guidance from the universe, today in the form of the Tarot,
Jan
Where do you turn for inspiration? – Photo of poster of St. Patrick’s Cathedral by J. Ketchel
I look for inspiration for my blog. I’m putting all my energy into finishing my book, so I look for something to guide me. I pick up The Art of Navigation by Felix Wolf. I open it to page 141 and read the following: There was such beauty in intending impeccability and integrity. I believe, however, that the abundance and generosity of life that I was experiencing were not so much tied to the effort of intending and following principles, but rather the result of simply honoring and acknowledging the aliveness of life, every step of the way. Ultimately, looking life in the eye with recognition seems to be all that is truly necessary.
I like this quote, it inspires me, and yet I wish to save my energy. I look to Jeanne for another message today. When I channel, the words just flow out of my pen onto the paper before me. It’s easy on my brain, my time, and my energy. And so I break my attachment to my usual Wednesday blogging routine once again and go to the energetic source of life, as I experience it, to my spirit in alignment with infinity. And so I offer you the following channeled message that came through, as I looked the energy of life in the eye and asked: What message do you have for us today?
Here is what Jeanne replied:
It is of utmost importance that each one of you become fulfilled beings of light and energy, that you work through the issues that hold you in fear and regret, so that your energy may be used to benefit all of mankind. I do not say this lightly, but only because mankind is at such a turning point that good energy may be the only saving grace. The more people who free their energy—from greed and inflation, from sadness and petulance, from the insignificance of neediness and desire-of-no-benefit—the more hope will stir.
The world, as you all know it, is suffering. This suffering is largely due to the energetic component of man’s unstoppable greed. Where have all the good ones gone? Nowhere and everywhere, for all of you are the good ones. You know this already.
Do not get caught up in feeling one way or another about the self, but work to free the self from that which holds you back from fulfilling your true potential. And what is your true potential, you ask? Your true potential lies in your energetic self, your spirit self. Bound by the rules of the world, it is fearful. It holds back. It stays safe in its encasement. This encasement, however, will only last so long. In order to truly embrace the true self, it takes guts of steel. You know you have such guts—you all do.
Fear and worry are figments of imagination. They exist only in your mind. Your mind controls your body. Release the figments of mind and you release your body. Release your body and your spirit will find room, your energy will emerge from its encasement and give you all that you need in order to fulfill your highest potential.
Let life in. Let the encasements of an old world go so that the earth may finally be respected for what it is: a life giver! Let life give itself by aligning your personal intent with life today. Allow the self to take the first step in cracking the encasement that surrounds you and keeps you from your greater experiences of life and the world around you.
Seek the fire within… – Photo by J. Ketchel
Sure, the world is a dangerous place. In many areas there is strife and evil, but do not look upon such devastation and disregard of humanity as someone else’s problem. Look inside the self for where you have the same strife and the same dangerous situations going on. The outer world is merely a reflection of the inner world and just as you all share the outer world, so do you all share the inner world. Do not think that your neighbor is not like you, equally holy and equally self-destructive, equally good and equally fallible, equally fine and equally exhausted by the need to uphold the insanity that life has become.
Find within that which you seek without, but also let life lead you and guide you to the answers you strive for within. Reconciliation with inner self will come from reconciliation without, but alignment will come from within. However, it is only in acquiescing to the non-specialness of the self—because all of you are equally special—that you will be able to access your guts of steel and forge a path to your inner self. Once that pathway has been secured, let it lead you into the world in a new way, in an energetically aligned way.
I cannot stress enough that in order to change your reality, you must dare first to change the self. How can you expect the world to change if you do not change your own habits and behaviors? How can the world change if the people who make up the world do not change? You are the first necessary agent of change. Be the agent of change in your own life. Grip your guts of steel and take the first step to cracking through your environment of encased energy and see what happens. Be open to life and life will meet you with equal openness.
The Shamans of Ancient Mexico were tenacious in their disciplined effort to retrieve their energy and free themselves from the constraints of the social order. These shamans saw the social order as the indexing arm of the interpretive system of our minds, which is both inherited and reinforced through the process of socialization we are all born into. These preset indexing categories interpret and define our fixed reality and deprive us access to our full birthright—access to unlimited worlds of possibility.
The Shamans of Ancient Mexico discovered that our interpretation system is completely restricted by a biased obsession with self. This constriction manifests in a lifetime obsession with worthiness, attractiveness, lovability, ranking, valuation, and validity.
As a psychotherapist deeply engaged in the intent of healing, I realize that all of these human concerns are profound challenges that require examination and action if we are to free the self from their restrictive reach. I have benefited from the perspective and methodology of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico to free the self to move into its own deeper potential.
The shamans define discipline not as a compulsive commitment to self-improvement routines, but as a persistent and unbiased examination of the self. They suggest that we not begin our inquiry into the self with the question, “Why did this happen to “me?” To those shamans this question is likely to trip us into a victim index of interpretation with follow-up statements like: “It’s not fair!” “I didn’t deserve this!” “I’m entitled to _______!” “I’m so bad!” “I’ll never be good enough!” “It’s my fault!” These statements are likely to further drain energy by entrenching the self in a depressed mood of hopelessness, futility, and surrender. Of course many of these statements may have some validity. However, they tend to bias the self toward an entrenched victim interpretation of reality that can see no world of possibility beyond this fixation.
Examine what is… Photo by Jan Ketchel
The shamans suggest that we begin our inquiry into our lives with the questions: “What is the situation that I am in?” “What do I need to do to change it?” “What can I learn from the situation I find myself in?”
Beginning the inquiry from this different perspective avoids the trappings of self-pity or self-defeat that the why question is likely to trigger. Such unbiased examination remains descriptive and factual, freed of judgment. Such examination is objective, focusing on what is, not whether I’m good or bad for being in it, whether I’m being punished or rewarded, whether I’m worthy or unworthy, whether it’s fair or whether I deserve it, whether I’ll ever be loved, etc. Those kinds of judgments have no validity in an inquiry into reality that seeks only to know the true nature of what is.
From the perspective of what is, I can examine my life as a being born into a family of characters who socialized me within the greater macrocosm of the social circumstances of the time I was born into, further elaborating that socialization process. From this perspective, I can see the pitfalls of that socialization and identify the opportunities available for learning to extricate myself from the limits imposed by the experiences of that socialization process. From this ability to know reality unfiltered by the judgments of worthiness, fairness, etc., I can retrieve my energy previously encased in such judgments and engage in actions to free myself from the bondage of a constricted reality.
Change what is and become fluid… Photo by Jan Ketchel
From this linchpin, I enter the fluid possibility of expanded reality—a life open to fulfillment in unlimited possibility—beyond the why, into the what is of the infinite.
Today I asked Jeanne to show us something important for now. Here is her response:
There are many methods of change… do what resonates… Photo by Jan Ketchel
Now is the time of great unfolding. By that, I mean that life will progress as it is set to until conscious shift is made. This refers to the lives of individuals, as well as nations and the entire universe. Energetically, you have already been swept into a process and as it is now so will it continue, until each one of you makes a concerted effort to change yourself in some deep and meaningful way.
The message for today is to take responsibility for the self. Investigate your personal life—looking for the mundanity, the repetitiveness—and the lack of energy that it gives you. Make it clear to yourself just what it is that you would like to keep in your life and what you know must go. Then begin a methodical shoring up of the good and letting go of the bad. Methodical is the key word here, not the likes or dislikes. Methodical implies diligence and attention, a method by which you elect to change yourself and the discipline you apply. There are many methods of change. I do not have to enumerate them. You know them already. Pick the method that works for you and do it impeccably. Do it in the unfolding of your everyday life.
It’s time to change. It’s time to really change yourself so that everything else around you can change too. This is absolutely possible. Everything will change if you begin to change yourself. Take my word for it—it works!
Change yourself; change the world! Those words have truth and power in them. I suggest you give it a try and then thank yourself for daring to break through the impasse that now holds you captive.
