Written by Jan Ketchel with a channeled message from Jeanne Ketchel.
Today, I ask Jeanne for a message to begin a new work week, which I always view as a new beginning of sorts. Here is what she offers us today:
Sit quietly with the inner self each day and set an intent. Whether it be an intent to change, for life to unfold as it will, for the signs to appear to guide you, for that which is wrong to right, for that which does not feel right to resolve, let the self be open. Let the self be accepting. Let the self be humble. Let the self be aware of inner resources both known and unknown. Let the inner process guide the outer process.
Change is inevitable
Set the intent to change and grow, first. Then set the most important personal intent. Ask for guidance. Ask for your life to guide you to change so that you may flow with greater ease, with greater kindness, with greater comfort in your world. Ask these things for yourself and others, that all may find peace and calm, so that all may face the challenges that come, with awareness of the greater journey in mind.
For that is the intent you set a long time ago: to take the journey of this lifetime. You have been doing well upon your pathways as they lie at your feet, taking your steps forward. Now take each step with greater awareness and set the firm intent to change the self and the world.
This is possible. Only you can do it for yourself. Only you are in charge of change. Only you are responsible for setting your course and achieving the goals and intentions you set. Accept that and then take your next step fully facing the change that greets you and asks you to flow with it each day.
That is your other job: to learn to flow with the inevitable changes as they greet you.
Intent alone is enough to begin anew. Set your intent and then see what happens. And then find out why.
The sun was shining, seemingly brighter and earlier than normal after a couple of days of overcast skies and thunderstorms. I was eager to walk in it’s first light.
“Don Juan says never carry anything in your hands when you walk,” Chuck reminded me, so I put my tiny digital camera in my pocket, wondering if I’d encounter something special, beautiful, or profound to photograph as we walked.
After we’d walked along for a while, talking quietly, I noted that there wasn’t much happening in the world around us. It wasn’t presenting its usual natural wonders, nothing to take a picture of. It seemed quiet. One car passed us. Then a bicyclist passed by, head down. Slumped over the handlebars he seemed focused on the front wheel endlessly turning as it rode the pavement. I recognized him as someone we pass often at that hour. He always seems depressed, never utters a greeting, never looks up, focused only on the road in front of him. Other than that I noted again the quiet of the morning. But then, at the same time, we both saw a rabbit, the first sign of real life. We smiled and acknowledged that nature does not disappoint.
Then I realized that I’d been like the man on the bike today, my head down, my eyes on the road ahead of me. As I’d taken each step I’d been aware only of what lay at my feet: the color of the pavement, the interplay of shadows and light, the leaves, bark, twigs and branches that came down in the violent storms that came through yesterday afternoon. The rabbit reminded me to look around, to lift my head from the path and see what else was available in my world at that moment.
Now the walk was different. Suddenly I was engaged in what was happening around me. Suddenly the perceived dull and sleepy world was alive and I was too. I noted how mistaken I was in my assumption that not much was happening. I recalled the first sounds we’d heard upon awakening in the morning, the baby foxes yipping and yelping in the backyard. I remembered the male bluebird who sat outside our window on the railing of the deck, letting us know that he and his mate have returned to the nesting box nearby for a third time this year, another egg-laying in progress, life giving new life.
As I recapitulated these earlier experiences, I studied again the bike rider, envisioning his riding posture, his energy stuck in his routine of riding along the same route each day, not noticing what else was around him. Unable to lift his head, I wondered what plagued him, and what he might be missing that could set him on a different path. I found myself empathizing with his dilemma, whatever it might be, for I too fall into the same patterns, ride the same road, only taking in the next step as I watch my foot hit the ground in front of me. Little changes, and even less is noticed, if I do not lift my eyes from the path in front of me.
This is what happens to all of us as we live out our lives, staying within our routines, caught in the endless turning of the wheel, whether it’s the endless wheel of work-worry-sleep, followed by more work-worry-sleep, or if it’s simply the daily routines we set out for ourselves. Even as we act out the habitual must-dos that really lead us nowhere, underneath it all we really do know that we need something else to make our lives meaningful and happy. But how do we step off the wheel? Today, I was reminded that if I just look up and away, in an instant the world becomes an entirely different place.
Once we set the intent to recapitulate, we can fall into the same kinds of habitual patterns, get stuck on similar wheels. Our personal dilemmas and deepest issues can overwhelm us. We can get caught in feeling sorry for ourselves, feeling neglected, abandoned, sad and depressed as we revisit our past and confront how we have lived, whether by choice or by circumstance. As we’re drawn back to recapitulate, we may forget to take in the world around us. Even while in deep recapitulation we must lift our heads and be in the world, for in my experience, it’s the world around us that offers us the help we need to interpret, to guide, to revision ourselves, as well as offering us the means to resolution. It’s also only in the world around us that we will find the means to relieve the stresses and intensities of doing deep inner work.
It’s also the world around us that offers us the opportunities to stretch our legs, so to speak, to experience ourselves as changing beings. As we recapitulate, we’re offered the chance to show ourselves and the world just how much we’ve changed, by refusing to do things the old way. As we face daily challenges in our old world, we’re offered the opportunity to test the new perspectives gained through the hard work of recapitulation. There is no better test ground or world in which to advance than the one we live in. This is the place we must do our evolutionary work in, and recapitulation is evolutionary work.
After the sighting of the rabbit I knew all I had to do was look up and allow the world to greet me with whatever it had to offer. As the second half of today’s walk progressed I lifted my eyes from the road and began to notice all the edible wild foods growing alongside the rural road we walk along, the prickly lettuce, the lambs ear, and plantain. I lifted my eyes higher and noticed that swallows now line the wires near the wetlands area where a few weeks ago the red winged blackbirds sat, sentinels guarding their nesting flocks in the tall grasses. As I walked even a week ago they’d dive down at me, warning me to keep away. They’ve moved on now, leaving the swallows their old perch. The world is constantly changing, I noted.
I heard the croak of a raven behind me and, looking higher still, I saw a tiny bird attacking him high in the sky, keeping him from raiding a nest no doubt. The hungry raven was no match for the tiny sharp-beaked bird and he flew off, cro-cro-croaking his guttural cry.
“What does that mean?” I wondered, for I find the raven most significant in my own world.
“Cro-Cro-CROAK! Cro-Cro-CROAK! Cro-Cro-CROAK!” replied the raven in answer to my question.
I repeated this phrase to myself a few times before I finally got the meaning of the raven’s call.
Don't Forget!
Don’t Forget! Don’t Forget! Don’t Forget! he seemed to be saying.
Don’t forget to use the world around you every day as you go through life. Don’t forget to lift your eyes from your well-worn path, from the routines, and notice what else is available to guide you along. Don’t forget that everything is available, possible, a guiding force, a messenger, a reminder. Don’t forget that as you recapitulate you learn new things about yourself and that you may not be as stuck and unavailable to change as you may think. Don’t forget to exercise the new you in the world. Don’t forget to actually put to use the new ideas, thoughts, and experiences you’ve been having. Don’t forget to trust your journey as perfectly right for you. And overall, don’t forget to allow yourself to experience the world differently.
You already know that the world is not as you at first perceive it, the raven reminds. This is what you learn all the time, but can you allow yourself to actually participate in that different world that you have worked so hard to enter, to understand, and to embrace?
The world of nature and the personal world we each live in, offers us everything we need to grow and change. To recapitulate or not is our personal choice. However, in my experience, everyday life is offering us opportunities to recapitulate and to use what we learn about ourselves all the time. We just don’t know this until we decide that it’s so, when we set the intent to re-experience how we’ve understood the world. Sometimes all we need to jump-start new life it the realization that we’re eager for a new perspective because the old one just doesn’t work for us anymore. That was my walking experience this morning.
As soon as I lifted my eyes from the hard gray road in front of me, I discovered a world of wonder. What is recapitulation anyway, but an opportunity to look at ourselves and our world with different eyes. Sometimes we need someone else’s eyes to show us what we’ve been missing. Sometimes we have to dare ourselves, push ourselves to go beyond our routines, ask ourselves to break through our old habits. Sometimes we have to ask ourselves to face our truths so we can move on, without regret, without sadness, simply because it’s time and right to do so. Recapitulation is happening all the time. Do you notice?
By the time I’d gotten home from my walk, I was in a new world. The bluebird greeted me on the deck again, showing me just how much in alignment with my spirit’s eagerness for changing life our natural world really is.
What are you being offered today to change your perspective, your outlook, your inner world, your relationship to self and others? There’s always something out there. What was the first indication in your world today that it’s just not as routine and boring as you’ve perceived it to be? Even in the subtlest ways, nature guides us.
Sending love and good wishes, and I thank the raven for posing ever so briefly so I could snap a photo of him!
Jan
I intend not to reincarnate into this world. The Buddhists recommend that those who hold this intent not wait until they find themselves in the Bardos as a departing soul to prepare for this challenge. They recommend that the intent not to reincarnate be the central focus of life while in this world. The Seers of Ancient Mexico similarly recommend that those who are intent upon taking their definitive journey into infinity, with awareness after death, make that intent the central focus of life in this world. How does this intent manifest in everyday life in this world? Through intimations to change.
Every time we refuse the call to change in this life we opt for reincarnation. Reincarnation, simply put, is the consequence of non-readiness to let go, to move on when it’s clearly time to do so.
Is this the road to change?
If a relationship has run its course, can we face that truth and end it? Can we give ourselves permission to release our grasp on a deeply familiar way of life, send our former traveling companion off with love, and move into new life?
When the call to recapitulate tugs at our bodies and psyches, beckoning us to awaken to deep truths we’ve pushed away for a lifetime, can we heed that call and acquiesce to the journey of the dark night of the soul? What we discover and experience on that journey will lead us into a different self as we put down the burdens we’ve carried that have kept us from entering life more deeply, more soulfully.
Can we allow for the changed world that appears when one we love departs this life? Can we release our hold on the physical presence of that being who once was the center of our lives? Can we open to the magic of a changed relationship, life and connection on new terms, and enter into a new world?
Is this the way?
Can we release ourselves from the obligations and expectations of roles that have long outlived their usefulness? Once we reach adulthood we are all equal beings responsible for discovering and meeting the challenges of our core reason for being in this world. The old roles of parent and child must be released to allow all to gather their full energy and take charge of their journeys. Can we release our parents, our children, ourselves?
Can we allow ourselves to fill our cups to the brim with experiences in this world, challenging ourselves to free our wounded innocence to love deeply without illusion? Can we live our illusions and release them when it’s time to move on?
Moving on?
Can we suspend judgment and feel compassion for even those possessed of brutality? Can we suspend judgment of ourselves and allow the awesomeness of this magical journey to course through our veins? Can we allow ourselves to be the magical beings we truly are?
These are some of the many faces of change that present themselves to us through the course of everyday life. These are the manifestations of the intent to evolve versus reincarnate.
What’s it gonna be, the red pill or the blue pill?
Taking the Red Eye, Chuck
P.S. After I had read the early draft of this blog on Thursday morning to Jan, she happened to read the daily astrology reading for the day on PlanetWaves.net and sent me this link. Pretty cool synchronicity!
Written by Jan Ketchel with a channeled message from Jeanne Ketchel.
There is such energy now, energy of change, disruption, and transformation, asking us all to go to higher levels of conscious awareness, as I interpret it. A lot of people are feeling it in their personal lives as well as in the world outside of them. Nature continues to show us just what it means to really change as well, as she erupts from deep within and creates whirlwinds of destruction from without. Nature is showing us that this is really a time of cataclysmic change, meaning, as I interpret it, that we must all really change now too.
In order to do what we’ve all been talking about, in order to fully embrace a new world order, we must all face our challenges head on, allowing ourselves to break with the old world order, in whatever way it takes, and start anew from totally different precepts, or no precepts at all.
This is my question for Jeanne today: I see so many people fearful, almost paranoid in the face of the truth of how things now stand on earth—with radiation embedding itself into the food chain as only one example. Our health and the world we live in are evermore compromised and what we have always trusted in is no really longer trustworthy or viable. How do we arrive, Jeanne, at a new understanding of ourselves so that we can face a totally new future without fear and paranoia?
This is how Jeanne responds:
My Dear Ones: I ask that you all begin anew from a place of calmness, that you start within your own body by listening more closely to the dire truths that you hear being spoken within the self. In order to do this, you must shut off the outside world in every sense. You must refuse to open the doors to paranoid fear and to the rabble from outside that is not truly in balance.
Take a minute to contemplate who you have been getting your information from. Question the truth behind the news organizations, the pundits, the truthsayers, the naysayers, and the soothsayers. Question, question, question EVERYTHING and then push it all aside. Know what is really being spread around the world as the truth of reality. Accept the bitterness of it, but do not attach to its taste in your mouth.
Accept that, indeed, the world is crumbling on many levels. From the highest peaks to the lowest valleys of the ocean floor you are being shown some rare truths. But do not attach to those truths as the only truths available because there are far greater truths, always accessible, that must be adhered to.
The far greater truths have we spoken of many times. They are the energetic truths of the power of all of mankind to effect change associated with the balance of nature.
Get in balance with Nature.
This means: get in balance with the forces of nature that are both calmly proceeding as normal, as well as the forces of nature that are shaking things up, coming with such powerful energy of change that you cannot help but take note.
This is what it means to get in balance: to accept both the good and the bad, the calm and the storm, the pure and the putrid, the beautiful and the ugly, the angel and the devil inside all of you—in your world, in all of energy, and in all of nature.
Can you accept that all of you are part of the world you live in, right down to the grittiest truth? Why do you turn away when I call you on this? Why do you turn from the hard facts of life that you are both angel and devil, that you are of the highest and the lowest, both enlightened being and ugly beast?
Not one of you will change, nor will your world, until you accept these truths. And you will not access such truths until you take the time to confront yourself with them. Take your lessons from outside, but do not attach to them on the outside before you attach to the same lessons on the inside. In order to get in balance with nature you must understand what nature is, both inside and outside. You must accept the disasters along with the enlightened potential in all of you.
You are all capable of rising up to a new level, but first you must go down into the depths of your soul and confront who you are.
You will not lose your fear of the world until you lose your fear of yourself. And once you sink your hands and teeth into your own fears and taste their bitter bite you will realize their significance in your personal life. Everyone must do this in order to change.
What are you afraid of? What do you run from every day? What do you turn from with such disgust and discomfort? What do you find most disagreeable and disturbing in others and in how the world operates? These are the things to face within. These are the guides to your unconscious self, to your secrets. Your fears, your sicknesses, your most painful thoughts and ideas of the self and others, your frustrations and despairs, are your most precious teachers.
The world is showing you that in order to really go to a new level—as Jan asks about today—in order to change the very foundations of life, you must face your most inner foundations and question what they have been built on. Do they truly hold up, or are you supporting an old world inside you? How can you expect the outer world to change if you do not change yourself?
This is the hard task at hand: Slowly and methodically dismantle the self. Pick through the ruins, take only that which is viable and real, and move on to new life basically foundationless, on the wings of your own cleared energy. You don’t really need more than that. Begin anew by becoming a new you. That is where you need to go…into a new you.
Keep your eyes open, your mind open, your heart open. Be ready at all times to observe and interpret with that openness, no longer attaching to your old rules, ideas, teachings, but fully open to new concepts, ideas, and views.
You never know where you will go as you do this inner-world work, and that is the beauty of it and the true beauty of life…that you just never know anything. That is how you learn to truly flow with the energy of nature, never knowing anything, except the truth of your place in that great unknown.
You do belong exactly where you are now, but everything else is completely untrue, non-existent, a great illusion. All that truly exists is the unknown, and that is what you must prepare yourself for every day: to enter the great unknown.
You know how to get there. It’s what we talk about all the time. Do it! What are you waiting for?
Nothing is as it seems— begin there.
Thanks Jeanne!
Most humbly offered from out of the great unknown where I am nothing.
—Jan
A trinity of recent dreams has afforded me a deeper awareness of nature and life, nature and life as we perceive them in this reality, nature and life as powerful beyond the ideals and hubris of mankind, and nature and life as eternal energy.
The first dream, which has recurred in some form or another throughout my life, since early childhood, depicts a barren, burned out landscape after some kind of bomb had fallen or fire has raged. Perhaps this dream first originated as a result of the cold war, when the illusive Iron Curtain was spoken of almost daily, the threat of attack from Russia as great as getting a simple cold. During my elementary school years we had frequent bomb drills, the way school children now have fire drills, learning to go into the hallway of the school building and duck down and cover our heads, or wind our way into the dark basement, hundreds of kids standing in the dark awaiting the threat of annihilation, just the push of a button away. Sometimes the nuns at my Catholic school were calm during these drills, at other times a heightened sense of urgency made the drill seem very real, the danger imminent.
Perhaps this dream of annihilation originated from within my own unconscious, teaching me something about myself, my true potential. In any case, I dreamed this dream again a few nights ago. It was the same dream as always. First, I notice that the earth is entirely burned to blackened cinders, nothing is left, it is totally razed, as if indeed an atomic bomb, a nuclear attack, or a huge firestorm has come through, completely wiping out every living thing on the entire planet. Not a twig or blade of grass remains, not a building or structure, not another human being. I am alone in this charred landscape.
Nature in renewal
I am never frightened in this dream. As I stand and calmly gaze out over this barren landscape, understanding that I must somehow find the means to survive on my own, I begin to see the stirrings of new life. The earth at my feet begins to crack open and as I stoop down to peer closely at the ground I see tiny green shoots beginning to poke up out of the earth, life seeking light, nature regenerating itself from the most devastating of circumstances. Each time I have this dream I receive the same message: Nothing can destroy nature; life will always find a means of seeking its full potential, and that, no matter what happens, the seeds of life are always present, within me too.
The second dream I had took this idea one step further. In this dream, I am attempting to invigorate life energy in others, to inject enlightening ideas, literally using a hypodermic needle to inject positive life energy into people’s arms. I knew that people were putting all kinds of things into their bodies in an effort to evolve, using all kinds of spiritual and mental processes and nutritional substances, but I saw how difficult it was for people. I wanted to help ease their sufferings. I knew that relief was only just an injection away. If I could just inject enough people with the right stuff the world would be a better place. It was not hubris or inflation on my part, just concern for the suffering of the struggling masses that made me want to help in whatever way I could.
Let it be...
In this dream, I was told to stop trying to control nature, that nature itself, within each human being on earth, would right itself, that everyone had the potential within to grow and find true alignment with nature, in their own time. The message was: Let nature take its course; it will come out right in the end, as it should be.
The third dream went again another step further. Now I had learned that nature was unstoppable, that it would correct itself when the time was right, but in this third dream I was asked to notice something else.
In this third dream, I am teaching a nature drawing class, asking everyone in the class to really look closely at the leaves and flowers and trees we are drawing, at the landscapes and scenes of nature that lie before us. In this dream, spring is in full bloom, everything is bright green, fully alive, perfectly beautiful, nice and neatly returned to pristine beauty after a long hard winter. The message here is to notice that even though the landscape has returned to a recognizable state, we must not assume that it is stagnant. We must not fall into complacency or take anything for granted.
“If you look closely,” a dream voice tells me, “you will notice that everything is still growing and changing, that nature never stops!” I ask all of my drawing students to peer closely at the blades of grass, the leaves of lettuce and the tips of the branches before them.
“Look,” I say, “everything is still in motion, always changing.”
This is the message of this third dream: to not stagnate or assume that just because everything has returned to a semblance of normalcy that it’s so. No, nature is doing so much more. We too have this same potential, this same life inside us. We are all in constant flux; like nature, our growing time is endless.
As we now face the truth of a rapidly changing natural world, as we continue to drill for oil and frack for natural gas, as we continue to send men into the depths of the earth to dig for coal that blackens not only their lungs but the air we all breathe, as we return to complacency after the recent natural events, saying that everything will take care of itself, we must look more closely at the decisions we make.
Yes, we must face the truth that we may destroy the earth, as depicted in my first dream. We must remember that we are the ones who have made the bombs that destroy nature, the nuclear power plants that hold annihilation at their core, with the potential to destroy the earth. We contaminate our water, the air, the earth we grow our food in. We do have the power to destroy and we may well be the generation that tips the scales. We may have to accept our part in annihilating ourselves. So what then?
Do we simply sit back and let that happen? Is that where we are now? Are we so disconnected from nature and our true interconnected potential that we will let that happen? Maybe.
The decision to grow...
Maybe we are the ones who will really change the world; we do hold that power, in a destructive sense, right now, at this moment in time, as well as in a positive sense if we so choose. But we do not have the power of nature to renew the earth. That power belongs solely to nature. We do not have the power to inject life, as I tried to do in my second dream, a false hope on my part, because real change and new life can only happen when people are ready to change and embrace new life. But we all have the power to make decisions to change, right now, so that our hubris does not destroy us and all other living things on this earth.
As in my third dream, if we observe the power of nature, use it as our guide, showing us that we are life itself, we are the energy of nature and life too, we are offered the opportunity to grasp that life will go on, in some form, with us or without us. Just as nature restores itself and changes constantly, in alignment with the energy of life itself, so do we have that same potential for unending life energy inside us. The final message of my third dream was that life is unending, that it never stops, that in some fashion it will keep going.
Yes, we must let nature take its course, but we must be in alignment with true nature, not with what we have done to her, not what we want to keep doing to her, curtailing nature to fit our needs. We must get in alignment with the fact that nature has the power to restore, but we must not be so accepting and complacent of this power either. We must wake up and read the signs of nature. She is asking us to change now and we must accept that we do have the power to enact change.
I do not accept that we are doomed, though it often feels that way. But I also feel that it is critical that we make personal and universal choices that uphold the truth of life.
Life is eternal, always changing and growing, in constant flux.
