to be open to what comes!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel
Dear Readers of Infinity,
Today’s channeling message from Jan and Jeanne comes in audio. Please let us know what you think of this new format, which we hope everyone has the capacity to listen to. It should work on all devices. Thanks for listening!
Here is this week’s channeled message from Jeanne. I asked for a short one, but I got a long one! -Jan
Know yourself completely and honestly. To your fullest capabilities, allow the self to be humble and accepting of the failures and faults of others, knowing that you will not reconcile your outer relationships until you reconcile your own deepest fears and issues.
Know that you are not alone in your sorrows and your tribulations, but that there is always something or someone to aid you, guide you, and be present for you, if you are open, aware, and willing to receive.
Now is a time of great change, even upheaval. You may see it outside of yourself so clearly, though you may also be experiencing it inside in some form as well. All transformation arises out of turmoil, so do not dismiss the difficulties that now confront you, but push through them to the best of your abilities, with your inner world being the main focus. That is how to enact and use the turmoil of change.
Ask the self: What does all of this mean for me, personally, at my deepest level? What am I really being asked or confronted with? What is my spirit trying to tell me? What am I being shown, for me and my own growth? What revolution is brewing inside me?
When we take our attention off what is going on outside of us—with the world, with the people closest to us, and with what is happening within our daily lives—and focus calmly on our inner world, something important gets revealed. It is that important message that we must pay attention to, striking and even frightening though it may be, perhaps even posing drastic measures. We must ruminate and ponder our deepest knowing of what we are being shown as the next most important battle to wage within the self. Then we must call to action all of our inner resources to aid us in finally tackling that issue.
Whatever that issue is, My Dears, if you face it squarely and fairly, if you address it with honest forthrightness, without backing down, your future will be brighter. The turmoil, as I mentioned, must be weathered through for change to happen. Once you are in the energy of that change, then all of your resources and tools must be brought forth to keep you focused and in balance, in alignment with your spirit’s intent.
Is it not better to be in the turmoil of rightful change than locked in a prison? Is it not better to be on the road to freedom, though that road my be difficult, than caught in a trap? Is it not better to be flying ahead than falling backwards? These are some of the situations that must be pondered as you face your changing self.
Reluctant though you may sometimes be, accept your changing process a little more each day. Focus on the glimpses of light ahead that your spirit has already alerted you to. The future is not really that far off!
Take responsibility for the self, for where you find yourself now, and be guided, not by that which is outside of you, but by the honest truths inside you. Only you know what they are, and only you can choose to accept them and deal with them according to your spirit’s intent. And only you know what that is!
With love and compassion for the self and others, move into your changing form. Meet your spirit more fully each day, as you dare yourself to keep going!
All life is subject to definite laws of change. The I Ching or Book of Changes, is a collection of significant archetypal scenarios that highlight those points of inevitable change. However, the I Ching also points out that though change is inevitable, we are free to make choices that set in motion their own flow of changes.
Freestanding water in an uncovered pot will eventually evaporate into the atmosphere. Such is the inevitable flow of change for this substance. I, in turn, could ignite a fire beneath that pot of water and thereby hasten an inevitable change by my intervention.
We are all beings who are going to die, this is inevitable. However, the choices we make in life may serve to shorten or lengthen the duration of our life, as well as determine the quality and fulfillment we will experience in human form.
Our animal contemporaries utilize the deep roots of accumulated archetypal wisdom to survive life on this planet. Animal decisions are rapid and automatic, involving little if any conscious deliberation. The human animal, with its latest development, the neocortex or rational brain, has, at least on the surface, parted ways with its internal instinctual animal knowledge. Google has become the warehouse of and vehicle to archetypal knowledge—one click away for conscious consideration and choice.
The Shamans of Ancient Mexico, warn that this neocortex is not to be trusted as a worthy arbiter of decision making, going so far as to suggest its functioning has been commandeered by a foreign installation. We’d be hard pressed to argue that the decision making of the modern brain isn’t under the influence of some aberration, as it has so quickly put us on the brink of destruction!
Perhaps we are at a stage of evolution where our new cog, the neocortex, needs to run its course before it finds its rightful, modest place next to the archetypal wisdom and instinct we inherit largely from our animal selves.
We must also appreciate that life itself spawned this new possibility of effecting change more creatively by growing a neocortex to begin with. Life wants consciousness to participate alongside archetypal wisdom and instinct. We are at the stage now of discovering how to do that responsibly, hopefully before we destroy ourselves.
On an individual level, we are all charged with taking control of our lives with consciousness. We are change agents who must learn about and respect the ancient wisdom we inherit in our bodies—wisdom that guides decision making through image and emotion. To be responsible, we must, with consciousness, discover why our animal selves might react with fear, anxiety, attraction, or aggression. We must face, as well, habits we have fallen into that mollify but don’t truly satisfy our deepest needs.
We are often confronted in dreams by the images of powerful or weakened animals that reflect and communicate the reactions of our instinctual selves to daily neocortex decision making. If we take seriously these reactions from our deepest human nature, and apply them to the decisions and habits of our waking lives, we are free to introduce changes that could realign us, placing us in good balance to hasten boiling the water of our own spirit/body selves and facilitate our own transformation.
Such are the possibilities of human change!
Chuck
Change is constant. It accompanies us through our lives, abiding with us, challenging us, sometimes catching us unawares.
The past few days have brought winter weather—ice, freezing rain, snow. Suddenly the world is different and we have to meet it in a different way. We need heavy outerwear against the cold and wind, and perhaps snow shovels to clear a pathway. The seasons are a marker of change that we can all see and we seem to roll along with them just fine.
Sometimes, when we know we should change, and there is nothing outside of us helping us out, we have to help ourselves. Arleen Lorrance, the originator of The Love Project back in 1970, suggests that we create our own reality, consciously, rather than living as if we have no control over our lives. But just how do we create a new reality for ourselves?
I know a person, who at the age of 85, left the home she had lived in for 60 years, left her friends and nearby relatives, to move to a new town, into a small apartment in a place she barely knew. She challenged herself to embrace a new life. Granted, she had relatives in the same town, but she was going to be on her own. Five years later she still lives there, in a diverse community of people she never would have met, many of whom are now friends.
I know several young people who dared themselves to take on life far from home, in strange cities they knew little about, but they succeeded in getting jobs and apartments, made friends and created new lives for themselves. I know families that have decided to change, to move out of crowded cities into the countryside. Lots of people move every day, seeking a new reality.
Sometimes, however, we aren’t able to change so drastically. We have responsibilities and duties to others. We have jobs and bills to pay, homes to care for. Life goes on and we seem to just go along with it. We can get bogged down in the drudgery of the ordinary, the routines and schedules. We constantly replay the same messages to ourselves, many simply not true, that keep us in old places. Our thoughts get stuck in telling us what we can’t do, that we aren’t enough, or that we’ll never change. But, the truth is, we are changing all the time. Every day we are different in some way, just by virtue of life itself, cells changing, energy shifting without our awareness. Just in being alive we change, but even more empowering is to volitionally change, to take over our own lives. In fact, we can create a new reality for ourselves in some very simple ways.
One way to create a new reality is to create a new inner reality. We can begin by changing what we say to ourselves. We can change how we think. We can change how we view the world around us and the people in it. We can reject negativity and begin giving ourselves only positive words, thoughts, and viewpoints. We can even go so far as to make one decision that we know will be beneficial for us and follow through on it, taking action on our own behalf.
I use meditation as a means of shifting my reality, training my mind to be quiet and calm so I can leave the rigors and demands of this world for a few minutes a day. The world always looks different when I get up from my meditation seat and reenter life. Dreams do it for us while we sleep. Taking a walk and seeing the world outside ourselves with new eyes can do it too. Simply being open to life can change how we experience our reality. If we decide to accept everything and everyone as beautiful as it/they are, another tenet of The Love Project, we find that we receive and accept on our own behalf in a different way too.
We might do something to beautify or expand our reality—paint our living space, try a new recipe, take up a sport, or do something we’ve always dreamed of doing. There are so many things we can do to create a new reality without moving from our center, though sometimes we might need something drastic, and that’s good too. Sometimes we just might need to give ourselves a kick in the pants!
The final great change that we must all face is death. I know someone who is facing death right now. This person is dying with great dignity. In moments of lucidity, death is being embraced. “Some people, like me, get lucky,” he said. “We have a healthy life, then get sick and die. Other people hang on for ten lousy years hoping they are gonna get better. That’s way worse than physical pain.” He is creating his own reality. Not succumbing to tests, hospitalizations, tubes and treatments, he is creating the death he wants. It’s his final opportunity to create his own reality in this world.
May we all take the opportunity to create a new reality for ourselves, it’s never too late!
Love,
Jan
What does it mean to be the change you want to see? When I was a child one of my favorite things to do was to hang upside down on the monkey bars or from the branch of a tree. Suddenly the world was different! The same thing happened inside when I’d hang my head off the side of my bed or the living room couch, my hair brushing the floor. Suddenly everything was different. Doorways had trestles to step over, furniture clung to the ceiling and my mother sitting nearby was capable of the most extraordinary feats. I’d watch her get up out of her chair and walk upside down! I’d imagine being a fly, able to walk up the walls and across the ceiling all the time.
I’d often climb high into the branches of my favorite tree and see the world from a different perspective, like a queen on her throne, ruler of all I surveyed. Sometimes someone would walk by on the path beneath the tree, unaware that I was above them, watching every move they made. During such times I experienced a unique and unusual sense of power, power that in my normal life simply did not exist.
It took me a long time to realize that I did in fact have the power to change how I perceived the world, my child self innocently showing me just how easy it really was. From a different perspective, the world was new and different and I was new and different as well. How could I not be when I’d suddenly find myself in such an extraordinary position, capable of changing the world as I saw it?
Most of my childhood was spent in deep depression. Not that I was aware of what depression was, as it’s only in hindsight that I know that it was a symptom of my life circumstances. As a result, I shut down, my inner fantasy world much more interesting that the everyday world I inhabited. The outer world paled and became dull in comparison. It became routine, boring, and uneventful. I never imagined it would be otherwise. The thing that changed all that was really getting fed up with that boring world, and with myself as well. I had to find out what else there was out there!
And so I got up and got going. I looked for signs to show me what to do. Signs appeared, which led to a series of changes as I dared myself to follow them. I moved, a lot. I married, divorced, and then married and divorced again. I filled my life with children and work, with keeping active and busy, with creative endeavors. I instigated change all the time—I became a person of action! But it wasn’t until I realized that with all the changes I was making, nothing had really changed at all, and I was still the same depressed person I had always been. Something was wrong with my approach.
It was then that I realized that all the changes I’d made had been related to the world outside of me. I was constantly changing my circumstances or the people in my life, or trying to. It was then that my spirit spoke to me. It was dying. It was worn out with the boringness of the life I was living. It gave me an ultimatum, change or I’m checking out. I sensed a spiritual death was about to happen, and in fact that it meant a physical death as well. Only then did a different kind of change start happening. A series of events began that instigated the real change I had always sought. As most of you already know, that was when I began to discover another, deeper self, and the reason for the deep state of depression that had plagued me my whole life. I met Chuck and began a three-year-long shamanic recapitulation.
My recapitulation brought me right back to my child self and her ability to perceive a changed world simply by hanging upside down from the monkey bars. I discovered that all I really needed to do to change myself and my life was to look at the world and myself from a different perspective! Sounds simple enough, but it took more courage to do that than any of the other things I had ever done in my life.
By my own volition, I entered a new world. Suddenly, everything began to make sense. Pieces of the mysterious puzzle of self began to fit together, the events of my life interlocking in a way that made perfect sense. I wasn’t incapable of change, I just didn’t know how to let real change into my life. It involved taking action on my own behalf. It involved not looking outside of myself for the change as I had always done—filling my life with so much doing that I had no energy left for anything else, nothing left for myself—but by looking inside. The old frantic, neurotic self was an attempt to keep the truth at bay, but it wasn’t until I turned inward, away from who I’d become in the outer world, that things changed. My perspective on everything changed, just as it had done when I was a child. From a new angle the entire universe suddenly took on a new look and new meaning. Suddenly, nothing was impossible!
So, how do we become the change we want to see? We take action. We change ourselves, from the inside out. Instead of looking at everyone else, blaming, resenting, regretting, whining and moaning about how bad we have it and how everyone else is against us, or doesn’t notice or respect us, the best thing we can possibly do for ourselves is to shut down all of that and be okay with finding out who we really are.
Are we really powerless? Why do we feel so entitled? Who says we’re not capable or worthy? Who says we’re hopeless failures? How did we get where we are? Whose voice rattles through our head, putting us down, keeping us safe and contained? Is that how we want to live? Can we let go of our resentments? Can we free ourselves of our old ideas? Can we take full responsibility for our own life? Can we think for ourselves?
I continue to seek new perspectives, to do things differently, to consider different ideas and to take action to change myself. It’s not that hard. Read something new. Take a walk. Movement alone can bring in much needed energy, offering new fresh air into the brain and body, opening up long dormant synapses. Learn to play, sing, take up a musical instrument. Eat differently. Think in a new way. Look at life from a new angle. Hang upside down every now and then and get a new perspective on the world. Be the change you want to see by changing yourself!
Eternally in metamorphosis,
Jan