Tag Archives: change

A Day in a Life: Three Signs

November 23, 2011 Jan 1 Comment

I have to make a decision. Before I fall asleep I ask for guidance. I dream. Guidance comes in my dream, repeated over and over again. I can’t deny its rightness.

Nonetheless, in the morning I struggle, so I turn to another oracle, the Tarot. I ask for guidance as I shuffle the deck and, spreading it fanlike over my heart, I pull a card. The card I pull succinctly and powerfully corroborates the dream guidance I’d received the night before. I know what to do; yet I still hesitate.

I must make a major decision that I know will impact my life, perhaps more than imaginable. I cannot help myself. I turn to yet another source of guidance. I ask my question as I flip through the pages of the I Ching. I let the book fall open. Once again, there is my answer, the same one.

Now I know I must go the next step, but before I do I take my three answers, the same and yet from different sources, and I meditate until they sit inside me, firmly planted, my intent set. It feels right.

Without planning to I make my move at the moment of shift from one astrological sign to another. I climb out of the deep well of contemplative Scorpio and step onto fiery ground, into the sign of Sagittarius, into the unknown. I must continue my earthly journey, on a quest for greater knowledge, awareness, and meaning. It’s all that matters. It’s right.

We all have much to deal with as we take big steps in our lives. But once we know the undeniable truth we cannot sit quietly. Our body, psyche, and spirit will not leave us alone until we face what we must, and they will not desert us either. They will bring us the gifts we need to take our rightful journeys.

We live in truth-speaking times. We must all dare ourselves to seek our own truths and then take them to a new level. It isn’t enough to simply know the truth. The energy of now asks us to act on what we know, to dare ourselves to transform our inner world and our outer world. That’s what I’ve done with an important issue in my own life.

I am calmly present now, though I sit in the fire. Fire is energy that will not stop. I wait for what comes next. It will be what I need.

As I watch the students on the campus of UC Davis getting pepper sprayed I am sick to my stomach, and yet I personally know what horrific things people can do to others. And yet I also know that the intent the students have set and act upon is so right. They too are making radical yet deeply significant decisions. The night they silently sat and watched as the UC Davis chancellor walked out of a meeting was chilling—their silence more powerful than the aggressive, abusive action of the campus police. This is the energy of now. It asks us all to be as brave as those young students, to calmly act on what is so right.

As we head into the Thanksgiving weekend, I offer thanks to the movements that will not stop what is right, no matter what comes to thwart the truth. I experience deep gratitude for those who dare to face their personal inner struggles, and a prayer that they may find the certainty that their journey matters as much as the journey the world now takes, for they offer energy to the entire movement of change. I salute my fellow human beings who dare to face the oppressor and say, no, not anymore.

We live in times of great change and I am thankful that I get to be a small part of it. I am thankful for the three signs I recently received that offered me the vision of certainty that I most needed at the moment. I wish that all may receive such visions of certainty and dare to take the next steps on their personal journeys.

It’s the time of fire. Let it burn through all doubt and denial, through the blockages and obstacles that will invariably appear. Let it clear the way for new growth. Even as we head more deeply into this season of change, we are not lacking in energy. It’s not really asleep; in fact it burns quite brightly.

The signs of change are all around us. Happy Thanksgiving!

Love,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

Readers of Infinity: Be Open to Possibility

November 21, 2011 Jan Leave a comment

Look beyond your daily lives to another reality. Perceive life as one side of a many faceted spectrum of possibility. You live most of the time focused on one side of that spectrum. Know that there are many others.

Continue to be open to life as it comes to you, but always with awareness that there is indeed more to life than what you now perceive. Seek not explanation at this point, but do seek experiences.

Ask the universe to provide you with a glimpse of a new reality—even just a brief one—and you will begin to understand the possibilities that exist, just waiting to be encountered, even in that world you now live in.

Encounters of awe are the awakenings that the human spirit dares to expect yet often rejects. I ask you now to remain open and nonjudgmental. Without trying to figure things out in a rational way, let yourself be open to the possibility that anything can happen and everything is possible. That’s all you need to begin to perceive differently: Be open to possibility! Let it come to you in whatever way it finds appropriate.

And just what is possibility?

Possibility is the unimaginable experience that shifts you, the moment of awe that lifts your heart and frees your mind. It is the moment when everything becomes clear. Grasp that moment in memory, in deep knowing, for sure enough, as quick as it arises, so will it sink away again, far from conscious awareness.

But the memory will linger in the sinews of your body; have no doubt. The awe will course through you and you will know its possibility to both affect you and eventually change you.

Look for those moments of awe and possibility. Without denial of such possibility, go into your day and your week with innocent hopefulness, without doubt, and without fear. Ask for experiences of awe, with openness, alertness, and willingness to be changed.

And then, when the time is right, ask to be shown why you are given those moments, those glimpses of awe. What do they mean? What are they asking you to do to change your life, your circumstances—inner and outer—and perhaps your future, in this world and another?

Channeled from infinity by Jan Ketchel.

Messages from Jeanne

Readers of Infinity: Be Proactively Self-reflective

November 14, 2011 Jan Leave a comment

Dear Infinity,

The I Ching tells me that it is time for incremental steps to change, that nature has a way of clearing things out and that the human being too, in small steps in the right direction, will eventually arrive in an evolved place. I read that the stars and planets ask us too to take small steps this week; to remain aware and pay attention to each moment and what we are doing, to be clearly aware that everything matters. What guidance do you offer us, Infinity, as we go into a new week?

Infinity answers with the following guidance:

It is logical to want to correct, protest, or confront that which is wrong, unjust, or disappointing outside of one’s self, but, truth be told, it is only in inner work that true change will happen. Change will not come to the greater world in the right alignment with truth until all people upon the earth bravely face their own truths, their own fears, their own disappointments, and the meaning of their personal anger and discontent.

True change, however, rides upon the winds each day. Opportunities abound to notice and act on behalf of the self and thus on behalf of all humanity, and the natural world as well.

A perfect world may not be possible you think? Perhaps it is a pipe dream? There are too many choices, opportunities, and forces to make it possible?

Do not fall into despair, Dear Readers. Grasp instead at the utter necessity of each one of you to resolve the issues of the self, to free your personal energy to explore the far greater meaning of life beyond the self, not as ego in the world, but as spirit energy in the world.

The grittiness of life pushes for change. Take personal steps each day to confront the self as to reason and purpose, as to why and wherefore, as to thought and action. Be proactively self-reflective. On a very deep level find out what matters most to the personal self and then ask why. Go deeper now into the self than ever before and question that which you have settled upon as truth, as identifiable self.

Can you go even deeper? Can you disassemble your set ideas of self until you are nothing but energy, with no attachments or issues? Can you dare to be nothing of importance? To self or others?

That is what all of your small steps of change are leading to. Disassembling the self in tiny increments, facing evil, disgust, negativity, fear and turmoil in the darkness of the self will provide a greater understanding of how others react in the world outside of you.

You are all the same. Face this fact and you will face the truth of life: You are all the same. And in the end you are all nothing but energy.

Thank you Infinity!

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Pater-no

November 11, 2011 Chuck Leave a comment

I don’t know if there is a more revered coach in that most masculine of sports, football, than 84-year-old Joe Paterno, affectionately nicknamed “Joe Pa.” Once again, the truth of sexual abuse has reared its ugly head and brought down another father—Pater in Latin—of the reigning order.

Simultaneously, Herman Cain, the pride of the Koch brothers and their American Enterprise Institute, finds himself steeped in the mire of sexual harassment charges.

Earlier this year we witnessed IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, France’s heir apparent, being brought down by charges of sexual abuse.

All of these incidents, combined with the major revelations of worldwide sexual abuse within the institution of the Catholic church, are signs of the end of an era. An end of an era is represented by death of the father—he who sets the rules.

In ancient times, the people of a kingdom would kill the king in a failing kingdom, declaring: “The King is dead. Long live the king.” Out with the old, in with the new! This is the time we are in now—The king is dead. Long live the king!

It’s the end of an era that put football, church, business, and the affairs of state over the truth of sexual abuse, rampant in the shadows of abuse of power. It’s the end of an era that has allowed for rampant greed, through the abuse of masculine power, to the detriment of the 99% of the world. It’s the end of an era that denies the animal in the human animal. We must reckon with the fullness of our being, of who and what we are and what we really need. This is the challenge of the new king.

Last week, I blogged about the energetic wave of the new era impacting Greece and Italy. Since then both Prime Ministers are stepping down. Greece is installing a banker. This is an old-world father, an IMF move to settle the markets, to restore the status quo. In Italy, similar moves are being made to force the Italians, like the Greeks, into indentured servitude. It won’t hold: Pater-no! The King is dead. Long live the King!

The 1% is “Pater.” The 99% say “NO!” This does not mean the end of wealth. Wealth is part of nature; wealth has a legitimate place. But it does mean the end of unbridled greed as the dominating Father of world principles. The facts of life simply cannot uphold the legitimacy of that world any longer. The facts, as they are rapidly revealed in our information age, immediately shatter the old world spins on reality.

Worlds are colliding now: worlds of greed, worlds of denial of need, worlds of suppressed truth of sexual abuse. Truths are being revealed; truths too unsettling to uphold the reigning order of suppression and trickle-down survival.

As we move from fall into winter now, from decay into darkness, may we all reconcile with our deepest truths, mirrored so powerfully in the outer world right now.

With the end of Pater-no the seeds of new life are planted deeply in Mother Earth, with new life and a new era surely on the spring horizon. Pater-no!

From the “end” zone,
Chuck

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Wounded Children

November 9, 2011 Jan Leave a comment

I believe we are all born wounded.

Art and Photo by Jan — Find the wounded child within

Some of us are born with physical wounds, readily apparent. Some of us are born with deep psychological wounds. Some of us are born into wounding circumstances. Some of us encounter wounding situations at young ages and some of us do not encounter them until much later. Some of us don’t know we are wounded at all. But, overall, if we are born into human existence we carry wounds that we are challenged to heal.

If we are ready to evolve into beings of higher consciousness and spiritual enlightenment our first challenge is to discover what our wounds are, to acknowledge and accept them. Our next challenge is to do everything we can to face them, to work on ourselves and the situations we find ourselves in so that we can heal and grow.

If you believe, as I do, that we choose the life we are in, then it stands to reason that we also choose the wounds and the work it takes to deal with them. I was born to distant, unemotional parents who lived out their own wounds their entire lives. My siblings and I were forced to grow up under the dominating force of those wounded child parents who were deeply cut off from feelings, with the inability to express love. If you have read my book, you know that shortly after the age of two I entered the world of a sexual predator. To what end, you might ask, did I choose that life? What is the purpose of my life?

I have discovered that in acknowledging and freeing my wounded child self, I have freed myself of a burden that I carried through many lives, that of the sexually abused child. In recapitulating, I have freed myself of my wounded parents as well, and I have freed my own children of bearing this wounding into another generation. Of course they chose me as a parent so they will have their own issues to contend with as they take their journeys, but I feel confident that I am no longer burdening them with my own personal issues by hiding them from myself.

As we ponder our wounded child self we are faced with many possibilities. Is our wounded child self known? Does it dominate us? Is it a big baby, like the 1% demanding everything of us, stealing our energy? Or is it like the 99% begging for a place in our lives, asked to be fairly treated and accepted? Is it angrily pushed away, decidedly evil? Or is it tenderly acknowledged as an integral part of our journey?

We are further challenged to become the proper adult figure in the lives of our wounded child selves. We must treat them fairly, without judgment, but with compassion and a firm approach. We must become a parent, loving and accepting, yet release the wounded child from its captive role, allowing it to take its own rightful place. We must thank our child self for bearing the wounds that are our evolutionary task, and we must find the means of integration, so that we may become wholly adult, all aspects of self in symbiotic balance, kept well-attended and nurtured, yet fully known.

If we are ready to release ourselves from our own traumas and face new possibilities for life we are more compassionate and appreciative of the challenges that others must face as well. We find that we are detached in a new way, having discovered that, as we recapitulate and face our personal challenges, we energetically free so many others. In freeing myself from my past I not only free my children, but I remove my negative, depressed energy from the world as well.

I believe my purpose in life is the same purpose as all other humans: to become as spiritually evolved as possible by knowing myself in the deepest way, freeing myself from repeating many more miserable lifetimes with the same wounds festering. In facing my wounded self I faced eons of wounded selves.

I understand now what it means to be deeply wounded and to really heal. Healing is what life is all about, finding the means to heal so that the world around us can heal as well. In our present lifetime it may be difficult to assess just what healing the world will look like, for it presently looks quite dire out there. With so many issues arising and coming to a head, the festering wounds of humanity now pose perhaps the greatest danger ever.

Triage is called for on a mass scale, but I still believe that each one of us must do personal triage first. We must go innerly and face the wounded self, healing the wounded child within so we can be fully present as integrated adults. In so doing we may just discover that what the world needs now is not really that much. We may discover that we don’t really need this world to be the same anymore, in fact we don’t want it to be the same because, as we recapitulate, we discover that what we once found so comforting is sorely lacking in comfort. We discover that our earthy needs are really very simple.

We really just need the world as our mirror, to keep us focused on changing our outlook on ourselves and others, to keep us focused on turning inward. We need the world to reflect back to us the real reason for being born into the life we are born into.

Find out why you are born so wounded and then find the means to heal. First heal the self and then heal the world by staying deeply, introspectively connected to a healing journey of constant course correction. By living a life of deep inner reflection, intent on healing, we take full responsibility for our wounded child self and we shift our energetic configuration from one of deep sadness, regret, and woundedness to one of power, grace, and freedom. Such inner work will change all of us: our selves, our families, our communities, our world.

In the Readers of Infinity blog on Monday I noted that Jeanne once again gave the same message: Learn to listen. I am struck by how often she speaks of training ourselves to pay attention to what is going on inside us. Listening is the key to doing inner work, to finding the reasons as well as the answers. In learning to listen to our wounded inner child we must be a good listener, but we must also be a good guide.

In recapitulating, or doing any kind of deep inner work, our adult self must be alert and aware, able to flow with what comes without judgment, fear, control, disgust, or dismissal. Each time we face our wounded child we must go deeper, beyond what we think, to what we feel and truly know is right. It is a process of constant readjustment, of learning to view ourselves and the world in a different way. We must all begin to envision ourselves as evolving spiritual beings, rather than human beings stuck in endless personal misery.

I challenge everyone to approach the wounded child self with compassion and love, listening to what the issues are and what the proper approach to resolving those issues might be. The answers for how to do this are available, but we must each decide that it is the journey we want to finally take. We must decide that in this lifetime we are choosing to free our wounded self to evolve in a new manner, both immediately now and in the lifetime to come.

Love to you all as you do your inner work,
Jan

Riverwalker Press