Dear Jeanne, I ask for your advice on behalf of all your readers. You constantly mention that we are in changing times—that change is happening all the time—and I get that, but I also know that sometimes it feels like change is so slow that we hardly notice it. I know that incrementally we are shifting and changing all the time, both inside ourselves and in the outside world, but it often feels like we don’t really get anywhere. I pose this question because I know many others are struggling to get to a new level of awareness and experience as well, and may be equally frustrated at times: If our goal is to get to a new level, how do we actually get there?

Here is Jeanne’s response:

I suggest, My Dear Ones, that rather than focus on the goal that you focus instead on the process. It is not the goal that will lead you to a new level but the steps you take on your journey. Allow your steps to be enough for now. Allow the incremental process that you might find frustrating to be all that you need to hone your skills. Do not look forward so much, but instead study what comes to teach you every day. You see, that is where the change you seek is already happening.

In those incremental daily shifts, in those signs that come to guide you, though you may miss their significance until you have experienced their outcome, you are already in the midst of change. This is what I do, indeed, talk about all the time. Change is already upon you. But do you notice?

I advise patience in all things now. Watch what is happening outside of you, carefully now, as you take into consideration the truth that fundamental life-enhancing change is happening all the time. Note that each day you are indeed a little further along on your course, that you have learned something new, that you are more open to your process of growth and evolution. And a little bit more each day is enough.

Release yourselves from impatience and let go to patience-with-awareness. Wake up each morning to a new day, for that is what it truly is, a new day to change the self even incrementally. And that is what you must all focus on now, incremental change, each step taken while more fully embracing the progress of the self. Your speed of progress is not an issue, it’s what you learn and what you do with it that is important.

Learn this: trust the process, as you lean into patience and work on gaining the alertness you may need to signal the changes you may have been missing.

Take your time to pause each day and take note, writing down even the tiniest of experiences that may be even slightly odd, quirky, mysterious, or downright phenomenal. And then seek the greater meaning for such experiences. Look at them without fear, and only with consideration for the lessons they seek to teach you. That is where your changing self will meet your impatient self and reveal the mind-blowing moments of awareness. What have you been missing lately? And what does it mean for you specifically? What does “taking it to the next level” really mean to you? It might not be what you think.

As I said, be patient, be alert, take note, learn something about the self and the journey you are on today and everyday. Be open, as open as you can be to the ultimate goal of growth.

Yes, the light of freedom is there at the end of the tunnel, yet do not get blinded by it before you have traveled the road to its true source. It is not the light you seek now, but the necessary lessons that will lead you to fully understanding the meaning of the light at the end of the tunnel. It is inside the tunnel, in each step you take that your lessons lie.

Look with joy on your opportunity to experience a new day in whatever world you reside in. Be joyous that you are learning what you need at the pace you can handle. Your own spirit decides the process, no one else.

Be patient. There is a reason for everything.

Thank you, Jeanne. Personally, I learn from this message that as we change we often seek to replace what we’re missing with something new, a new habit, a new comfort, a new person. Feeling the gap, we grasp at something that will make us feel comfortable again. Perhaps we even grasp at meaning. But what I get from Jeanne’s message today is: don’t grasp, even at meaning. Just keep taking the journey; you will learn everything you need. As she says, it’s the journey itself that is important, and not necessarily the goal. Set the intent and then let intent lead the way. -Jan