Tag Archives: change

#743 Navigating a Path of Heart

Written by Jan Ketchel and including a channeled message from Jeanne Ketchel.

Last week, in my conversation with Jeanne she established the importance of setting intent using two significant mantras: Everything is possible and Everything is meaningful. If we go the next step in learning to navigate life with those two ideas firmly embedded in our subconscious, simply through the practice of repeatedly saying them for five minutes each day, we open ourselves to experiencing reality differently.

For instance, if we look at everything that happens to us, comes to us, greets us, meets us and confronts us as personally significant we begin to understand what those two mantras can do for us in helping us expand our awareness. For that is the purpose of life, I believe, to expand our awareness beyond the issues of self, of poor me, of blame, and self-defeat, and to instead open to the universe, knowing that it provides everything we need.

I ask Jeanne: What would you offer as the next step in expanding our awareness, as we begin to more thoroughly practice the intent of navigating through life by becoming open, by setting our intent to more fully open to guidance from the universe?

Jeanne responds: The next step in opening to the guidance of the universe is emptying the self of all ego-related wants, desires, ideas and importances, and becoming a truly pure being. I do not mean pure in the sense of making the self over by force of any kind, but pure in the sense of emptiness, of being open without thoughts of personal gain, personal implications of any sort, but instead resorting to pure innocence of spirit, that which one is born with. This innocence involves no motives, no desires, no attention, no ego self, but is pure energy of curiosity, of love, of openness to truth of self and of the world, as it comes to greet you each day.

This pureness of heart, this innocence I speak of, does not find what it needs in that world, for there is nothing that it needs there. All it needs is permission to live. And this permission may only be granted by each individual.

As you begin to intend change in your life, you will find that you will be confronted with many feelings. You will question whether or not you are doing it right, or if you are indeed worthy of allowing the self to change. These questions, and many others that arise, must be viewed as attached to that world where your self-importance has had to play a part of utmost importance in your life. You have had to spend your life building up and supporting your ego, for that is the system you live under.

But, if you are reading my messages, and the messages of other guides, then I guarantee that you are no longer interested in upholding that system. After a while, such a system drains all of your energy, depletes your storehouse, and leaves you wondering what you have been doing your whole life. Who have you been living and working for, and for what reason? Is it simply because you have followed the ideas of the system? Is there another path?

Yes, I trust that you, if you are reading my words, do know in your heart that another personal path exists. It does not exist as a well-laid out system with rules and diagrams, for it is not that kind of path. It is a path that is, as of yet, not revealed. The spirit of it may have been revealed to you a long time ago, but you will not learn about it again until you tread upon it, taking one step at a time along its unknown route, following the synchronicities inherent in life, in nature, and in each one of you, as you open to a new way of living.

Learning to navigate along a path of heart requires that you be open. And that is what I suggest you study next. Find out what it means to personally open yourself to your innocence, to allowing your true spirit self to become your eyes, your ears, your voice, your intuition, your heart.

The first thing to remember is that, at all times, you must study and know who the old self is. Only in knowing how the old ego-based self works will you not be fooled or caught as you attempt this most significant change. The old self is full of habits, thoughts, ideas, judgments. The old self is fully ready to dismiss your innocent thoughts and ideas. The old self is not very open to navigating life in a new way. It is ready, at all times, to fall back into the comforts of the system it has grown up in.

So your first challenge will be to learn how it operates, studying how it reacts to life or does not, what it chooses to believe about the self, and what it most often desires. This old self is your most helpful companion as you seek your new innocent self. Use this habitual self to look elsewhere, to steadily tell it: “No, not that way. Let’s look for a new way.”

Look at the possibility that even the tiniest and most insignificant sign you receive may be the catalyst to change. What does that birdcall mean, the one you hear most noticeably today? What does the nagging noise mean, or the message from your boss, or the anger that arises when you feel rejected or ignored?

What else can you do or feel or take note of in your life? What other sign is available to point out or introduce a new way of thinking, feeling, perceiving, or navigating life?

When I say that life, that the universe, that nature itself offers you everything you need to change and grow, I put each one of you in the same categories. You are life. You are nature. You are the universe. Everything you need is inside you.

Set your intent to change. Be open to the possibilities that come to you. Know fully that everything is meaningful by studying your self and your experiences. Then take it another step and use what you now know to live your life according to a new plan of unfolding life. Allow your innocence to wake up with you each morning eager to explore the world, looking for the resonance of heart in all you do. That is how you will begin to more fully live with universal intent.

It is up to each one of you to do for the self what no one else can do for you. Seek guidance by all means. Seek help of those who have done the work and continue to face challenges, knowing full well that the best teachers will always set you to task, asking you to have the experiences that only you can have, that only you can enact, that only you can embrace.

You are the universe. Yes, that is true, but that will mean nothing and get you nowhere if you do not go and find out what that means. You are nothing until you do, though you hold always the possibility of that universe inside you. It is only in having personal experiences of the self as truly open, daring, and honest that you will discover what it means to have access to all things within.

The true path is to go within, to navigate the self, to become innocently empty once again so that you may truly be open, using the outer world as guide to finding the path of heart.

Learn what it means to navigate life and evolve, one step at a time. It’s hard work, but it is truly worth the effort!

Thank you, Jeanne!

Please feel free to post comments or respond to this message in the post/read comments section below. And thank you for passing the messages on!

Most fondly and humbly offered.

#742 Begin a Practice of Navigation

Written by Jan Ketchel and including a channeled message from Jeanne Ketchel.

It’s very early on a cold winter morning as I begin writing. The snow still lies deep and white after last week’s storm. The gutters are blocked with ice, in spite of all our efforts to alleviate the problems of ice jams and icicles, but our wood stove keeps the house warm. We have enough, as far as creature comforts are concerned. We are happy living a life of relative simplicity.

But, as Chuck wrote about in Saturday’s blog: there are no advantages or disadvantages. I carry awareness of death, yet I also choose to fully live, to each day more fully embrace this life I am in, to continually shed old burdens and become more fully myself. It is my choice to more fully open to where this life is leading me, into the unknown to be sure, but I know, from previous experiences, that if I remain open, allowing myself to be guided, that my life will indeed be fuller, with far greater experiential potential than if I chose to remain in an old state of suppression, repression, and depression.

In suggesting that I am open to being led or guided through life, I am speaking of being alert to and aware of the meaningful signs I encounter as I go about living each day. These signs often point out a direction to take, offering me a choice of one thing or another, leading to different outcomes, different experiences. In navigating through life in this manner the journey becomes partly personal intent, partly spirit-driven, and also partly universe-driven. As I engage in this process of navigation, I have come to rely on what I consider to be two of the most important mantras for living a life of constant growth. They are:

1. Everything is possible.

2. Everything is meaningful.

Jeanne gave me these mantras quite a few years back, as I struggled through a time of great personal conflict. I saw how important they were, strong supports, always ready to offer me the light at the end of the tunnel, the hope and optimism to keep going, as I learned to accept the signs and synchronicities that were indeed present to guide me. I just had to look for them.

Once I accepted these two ideas as the backbone of living a life of fulfillment, my world lightened considerably. By continually repeating and admitting to the truths of these two phrases, the darkness that I often found myself in began to lift. Eventually, I saw and perceived life and myself differently. And my life, seemingly of its own accord, began to change, as I allowed the intent of these two mantras to become my intent.

I know that many people give up hope of ever having a better life, a different life, a fulfilling life, not finding what they need, feeling overcome by the challenges and vicissitudes of life, electing to stay in a state of incompletion. But is it really easier? As Chuck and the seers of ancient Mexico state, there are no advantages or disadvantages because we are all facing the same thing. In reality, we are all facing the light and the dark. But we can certainly choose how we are going to face them.

Being in the darkness may be the only way that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And the opposite is perhaps also true: that it is only when we are in the light that we notice the darkness encroaching. Is it the light or is it the darkness that we fear? Both are present simultaneously. Facing both are necessary aspects of the personal journey.

Today, I ask Jeanne for guidance around this dilemma, as we all suffer at times in darkness. We all need a little light to guide us. We all seek something, and even a pinhole of light at the end of the tunnel may be all we need to keep going.

Jeanne says: Look within where all of life lies waiting to be explored. In personal sifting, in explorations of the self, will all light and all darkness be revealed. It is not so easy to simplify this process to a few words, but I will try, for it is indeed a subject worthy of making available, so that all may journey inward, even as they journey outward.

I ask, first, that a process of sitting calmly alone, in quietude, be established on a daily basis. In order to begin to change one’s life, one must learn to slow down. Even if it seems that there is no time for such a practice, it must be arranged for and strictly adhered to. It is in such quiet times that one will draw upon the inner knowing that is necessary for taking a journey of change.

Find a time each day to sit calmly. It does not need to be any place special, but it should entail noticing the breath, using it to center and calm the self for a few minutes at a time. Your breath is always with you. You carry it with you at all times, so where and when you choose to do this practice does not matter. The only thing that matters is doing it.

You can do this calm sitting in the car after a drive to work, before stepping out into the workday. You can do it for a few moments at the beginning of the day, sitting in bed. The early morning, still drowsy from sleep, is perhaps the most beneficial time to connect with the inner self, before one steps into the outer self who must begin a day of outer doings.

By offering the self a few moments of quiet, by being open to the inner self and the mantras of possibility and meaningfulness, as Jan states, a new feeling about life in general will begin to take over. Without trying, simply by intending a rich life full of signs and synchronicities, one will begin to have experiences to support the changing self.

Begin this process now, this day. Sit quietly. Breathe calmly. Repeat the mantras: Everything is possible. Everything is meaningful.

Do this for 5 minutes. Breathe in and out slowly and deeply. Let the mantras erase the thoughts that preoccupy you.

Accept the truth that life, the universe, and the goodness that exists all around are there for you too. Do this now and begin the process of opening to the light and to the dark, for they ride side by side, within each one of you. And they are both ready to guide you.

Thank you, Jeanne. As I finish channeling, coming out of the dark tunnel that is my experience with her, I see that the light has come into the world, creeping over the snow, through the trees and into the house. I see the tracks of deer, fox, cats, squirrels and mice in the snow outside the window, life that is present in the dark, in the night, as well as in the day.

As I greet the light, I am thankful for this guidance on behalf of all of us, and I look forward to more experiences of these two dear mantras—everything is possible and everything is meaningful—for they have indeed served me well. I hope they work for you too. The third mantra that Jeanne gave me, that was so helpful and still is to this day, is: Everything will work out just fine!

Please feel free to post comments or respond to this message in the post/read comments section below. And thank you for passing the messages on!

Most fondly and humbly offered.

#741 A Conversation With Jeanne

Written by Jan Ketchel and including channeled guidance from Jeanne Ketchel.

Last week I wrote about restlessness as being a catalyst for change and it often served me well, for I believe that we are here to change, that to evolve we must confront our restlessness and use it wisely to keep growing. I use the terms growing and evolving in the sense of allowing ourselves to have experiences in life that lead us to a higher awareness of ourselves as beings on a mission.

What is my purpose for being alive? What is my mission? At pivotal points in my life these are the questions that have spurred me to keep going. I could never imagine life as anything but extremely meaningful, but I also always knew it to be a very personal journey. Awareness of myself as a separate being on a singular journey arrived early, but it has taken many years to sift through the rhetoric of interference, what the seers of ancient Mexico call the foreign installation, the conjuring, rational mind.

The rational mind seeks concrete answers and explanations, wants everything lined up, quantified, labeled. The seeker side of the self may have experiences that cannot be so neatly tied up and explained in acceptable terms. If I tell someone I have experienced myself as pure energy, I may be met with disbelief and dismissal by a rationalist, or I may be met with excitement by a fellow explorer of energy. Both reactions are right, for we do live in a world of rational concreteness, but we also live in a world of wonderful energy. Once I allowed myself to really explore the world of energy that I had indeed always known and experienced, I learned how to detach from the foreign installation, personal importance, and being offended when someone dismissed me as just another kook.

In reality, I am a very pragmatic person, not lent to over-exaggeration or fanaticism. Basically, I have learned to live in two worlds and am quite excited to be in both of them.

Ten years ago, I began a shamanic journey with Chuck and Jeanne Ketchel. It was right about this time of year when the last great restlessness struck me and I knew, with a certainty I had never quite acquiesced to before, that I was about to embark on a journey of total change.

It was a year of shattering, of breaking through personal blockages. It was the year of September 11th and the year Jeanne died. It was a year of beginning a journey to new life, for out of the rubble of shattered lives rises the phoenix, transformed energy burning brightly, as it rises above the flames of destruction, carrying only the energy of truths revealed, reincarnated in new life.

What have we all learned in the past ten years? What have we done with ourselves and our lives that is worthy of speaking about? What have we done as a nation to promote healing and compassion both at home and in the world? What have we done on a personal level for ourselves and others?

Once again I feel restless because I feel that we are on the verge of another catalyst that will force us to change, for perhaps we did not truly pay attention to the true meaning of the events of ten years ago. Even though I have experienced incredible personal change, and even though there are so many more people spreading the message of the importance of personal transformation—not in a religious sense but in a perceptive sense—the Deepak Chopras, the Eckhart Tolles; the many people who have dared to become open channels, who have shed self-importance in order to bring forth the news of the dire necessity for change.

Something else is going to come along to shake us out of our boots again. It has to, for we have not done our homework on a national and global level. Yes, we have done a lot of work, but the true messages of change have not spread as they should.

People, Jeanne says, have become more isolated, more protective, more selfish, more inferior in their thinking. Isolationism breeds contempt for fellow human beings. Isolationism leads eventually to destructive energy. Isolationism breeds fear and that is the energy that now permeates the earth. Fear abides so strongly upon that earth that it cannot contain itself.

It will now begin a pounding at the doors of reality as you know it, seeking expression and release. There are two options:

1. to recognize it for what it is, fear of the unknown, and confront it, or

2. to allow it to rule, to dominate further, creating more destruction.

Fear is the only enemy upon that earth. This is true on an individual level, a national level, and a global level. Fear, once induced, like labor, will deliver what it holds within. Allowing it to release will have one kind of outcome. Allowing it to dissipate by close examination of what it truly is will have a strikingly different outcome.

Fear breeds fanaticism, which breeds destruction. Claim fear as a catalyst to personal change by wrestling it down inside the self. Face it head on, on a personal level, each one of you, and see what it really is that causes your personal restlessness, your personal discomforts, your personal anxiety, and your personal stagnation. I guarantee that it is not really anything outside of you that is so bothersome, but only something inside you.

If everyone voluntarily turned inward and confronted and cross-examined the fears inside them, the world would set a course correction for peaceful resolution and change. However, at this time, there is too much reliance on outer sources of energy, electricity of the manmade sort, rather than reliance on the inner sort of electrical energy.

Mankind is on the verge once again of choosing a new way of life, of freeing himself from destructive behaviors and old fears. If you knew everyone else had the same fears and the same desires, would you be less afraid? If you knew that everyone sought peace, happiness, love, and earth-oriented living, would you be less judgmental? If you knew that the sadness you truly feel inside you is felt equally deeply by everyone else, would you allow yourself to feel for others as you do for yourself? If you knew that today was your last day on earth, would you change your reliance on fear? Would you acquiesce to the fact that your energetic self truly exists? Would you let go of all that you hold so important and realize that none of it truly matters? Would you let yourself go free?

Jeanne, you are really quite confrontational today!

Yes, I am, for it is indeed time to shake things up on an energetic level. Take note: Your world is about to change. What are you going to do about it?

I suggest that each one of you find your inner self. Get to know it extremely well. Find out how it reacts to life and why. Don’t accept everything the mind tells you. Don’t dismiss so easily what your body tells you. And don’t dismiss your energetic resonance. Please learn what it means to be an energetic being. It will serve you well in the year to come.

Are you suggesting a big change? On a global level?

I am suggesting that the potential for disaster created by man’s fear of man is imminent. However, disasters have a way of being averted by those who choose to feel rather than judge. Become a feeling being and you will understand what I am talking about.

This message is for all of humanity. Look to nature to guide you in this energetic endeavor, for nature carries the answers. And you may need to turn to nature for your very survival, if all does not go well.

Instinct, feeling, heart-centered awareness of the self and all human beings as journeyers to enlightenment, to God-energy, will aid in the release of deep-seated fears. You must learn to look always within if you are to save the planet and learn to dispense with fear as the energetic driver of change. Allow something much more profound to enter your being and take over the course of humanity. A new direction is being revealed. Do you see?

Yes, Jeanne, I believe that many people upon the earth truly want change that is good, pure, and sensitive, that humanity as a whole wishes to be unafraid, to be freed of fear and judgment. But I also believe, as you say and through my work with other journeyers, that the biggest blockage is within each of us. We must learn to free ourselves first. Thank you for this message.

Dear Readers: Pass it on and help create the new energetic network of transformation and change that Jeanne suggests is so personally necessary for each of us to partake in, for all our sakes, and the planet too. And then set a personal intent and let it go to the energy of all good intent, to the Universe, who has a way of returning it to us in just the right way, at the right time, and in just the right amount.

Please feel free to post comments or respond to this message in the post/read comments section below.

Most fondly and humbly offered.

A Day in a Life: Intending Change

I have been practicing intent as prescribed by the seers of ancient Mexico to enact change. Every day I state my intent and let it go out into the universe. I shout out or silently speak the word: INTENT! Sometimes I don’t even feel that I have to keep repeating each personal intent that I have set, I just shout the word INTENT and ask that my already prescribed intent bind with the intent of the seers of ancient Mexico, with the intent of the women seers, with don Juan, and with the intent of good, because I feel that it is important to imbue my intent with pureness of heart.

In the old days, before I did a recapitulation of my childhood and learned about the seers of ancient Mexico, I would take drastic measures to force change in my life. My favorite method of enacting change in those days was to move, sometimes across the country or even sometimes across the ocean to another country. I once counted eleven moves in seven years, from state to state, city to city, apartment to apartment. Sometimes I moved alone, sometimes with a partner or with a husband. When it was impossible to move house I would rearrange the furniture in every room, shoving and pushing sofas, beds, dressers, bookshelves around until I got just the right feeling that I was seeking. Often I was seeking a sense of contentment, peace of mind, inner quiet and if my outer environment could reflect that I could calm down.

Restlessness was more often than not the catalyst for these moves, a restlessness that I bore my entire life but never quite understood as a deeply inner restlessness. I thought I just needed to keep moving all the time, that I was innately a person who sought experience and adventure, but it wasn’t until I sat down with Chuck and began to explore that restlessness that it revealed itself as something else. It took a while for me to fully grasp that with all of that moving and rearranging I was trying to run away from none other than myself.

During the recapitulation of my early childhood I understood just what it was that I was running from, devastatingly frightening memories of experiences of near annihilation that would have sent anyone fleeing. I learned to sit in one place and bear the tension of those memories as they reappeared, not to haunt me this time, but to teach me something about myself. I learned that, even though I wanted to get up and run, sell my house and move to another town, another city, another country, I did have the courage to stay and face the demons, as I had once done so strikingly well as a child.

In facing my demons, both my old abuser and my personal inner demons who had stood by me for the first fifty years of life, becoming increasingly more familiar as each year passed, I learned not only about how useful they had always been to me, but also how well I had utilized them to keep going, to stay not only alive but to grow up and eventually be ready to recapitulate. I learned that my inner demons were not all scary beings, that many of them helped me, that in fact I controlled many of them for my own purposes. I learned how powerful I had become, mostly in order to keep them quiet and to feel safe.

Now after having learned the lessons of recapitulation, one of them being that we hold everything inside us, I no longer feel the urge to run when I feel the need for change in my life. I know that in simply sitting, by intending change on an energetic level, I can profoundly impact my life and the lives of those around me. When restlessness hits me these days, I acknowledge its powerful intent. I thank it for alerting me to the fact that I am perhaps stagnating again and that, yes, I do indeed need to shift, but then I sit with it. I ask it what it wants, why it came at this moment, and I look for the deeper meaning inside myself now, rather than focusing it outside of myself.

When the universe sends me a sign asking me to change I know that it means I must re-examine where I am and why I am here. Perhaps it indicates that an inner course correction is necessary, or that I am not fully present each day, or that I have slipped a little too far from what is most meaningful in my life. Perhaps it indicates that I have fallen back into an old pattern of behavior that no longer works for me, that I am doing something to myself that is harmful or just plain old boring. Perhaps it is pointing out something as simple as an old idea or judgment of myself that is simply not true, but perseverates along an old path of thinking, a trench long ago traversed and worn deep, a trench that I actually got myself out of a long time ago.

Perhaps when restlessness arises now it is time to reenter that trench one last time and look more closely, with eyes wide open, at the false images and ideas of myself that I once had, to now fully grasp how wrong they were and are. Then it is time to turn my eyes upon the truth of where I am now, who I am now, and more fully embrace that changed being that I have worked so hard to become.

Perhaps when restlessness comes knocking now it is just telling me that it is okay to be me. It is okay to intend change, to keep going, to want to grow and to evolve. It is okay to leave the past behind, but only when it is fully revealed and done. It is perfectly acceptable to move into life more fully whole and present, truths accepted, self accepted. It is perfectly acceptable to fulfill even more of my personal potential in a more meaningful way, without fear that someone will be offended or that I have to carry old burdens or demons that are no longer useful.

Intending change, by sending our intent to the universe that is so ready to help us, is perfectly all right and perfectly right. It is perfectly acceptable to keep seeking to be all that we can be. After all, what else are we here for?

INTENT! INTENT! INTENT!

If you wish, feel free to share or comment in the Post Comment section below.

Sending you all love and good wishes,
Jan

#731 Free the Mind. Free the Fear. Free the Spirit.

Jan Ketchel channeling Jeanne Marie Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Do you have a message of guidance for your readers today?

Today I speak of detachment and learning to allow others to take the journeys they must. Remember: All human beings are upon that earth to learn lessons in evolutionary growth, but how can one grow if one is not allowed to have experiences in life?

Learning to detach from the sorrows or difficulties of others may enhance a personal journey and may also lead to a greater understanding of compassionate living. In learning detachment may one be granted the means of gaining a fuller awareness of life’s meaning and life’s purpose. In learning detachment may one grant the self, and others, the opportunity to have vital experiences in life. Only in having such experiences will one learn anything of use. For life is meant to be played out on the fields where all energy intersects, coincides, and greets all other energy, on the fields of life.

Allow the self a little freedom today and you will allow the self access to a deeper sense of detachment from the lives of others while also gaining a deeper sense of what it means to be human.

Can you explain further?

In allowing the self a little freedom from the worries that one carries for others, by releasing the mind from its conjuring play by play, its repetitive swirl of emotional attachments, one may find a sense of peace and freedom reigns, so that the work of the self may become the most important aspect of life. In detaching from the worries of others, the self is allowed attention, and this you must understand is most important. For how do you expect to be of aid to others if you do not allow the self to be free, to evolve, to learn what life is about, and to change?

Only in healing and changing the self will freedom from that which plagues you be achieved, but such a process takes attention. Focus must be paid to the self in the world. So the first step in learning to detach from the sorrows and worries of others involves freeing the self from one’s own sorrows and worries. In essence, detaching the self from personal issues by thorough examination of repetitive actions is a good way to start a healing process. Find out why you do the things you do over and over again, to the detriment of self and others, including worrying, avoiding, resisting, and hiding from life, and you will have begun a true journey of change.

So today, on this most auspicious of days, offer the self a new method of living your life by taking a few steps in detaching from that which has kept you bound, ill, worried, confused, in denial, or simply frustrated. Free the mind. Free the fear. Free the adventuresome spirit self to have experiences in life without so many attachments, real and unreal. For what is it that you are so attached to to begin with? Is it something that is real? Or is it simply something in your mind?

Learn to let go of things that do not belong to you, that do not help you grow, that do not allow you to experience the true self. For that is why you are there, to discover the true self, the truthful self, the truly real self.

Why did you call this a “most auspicious day”?

Because it is! But you will only truly understand what that means by offering the self some changes, by detaching from the strict and forbidden, from the rules of old that told you a long time ago that you were not worthy of this life, yet does your spirit seek always to show you otherwise. Follow your spirit and discover why this day is most auspicious for you!

Thank you, Jeanne!

Please feel free to post comments or respond to this message from Jeanne in the post/read comments section below.

Fondly and most humbly offered.