Stretch your imagination to include the possibility that everything you think you know isn’t true, that what you’ve learned in life is only applicable to a certain fragment of life, that which you have been taught is real, and that there are so many other possibilities of “real.” Creativity allows you to tap into other realities, to bring into existence something from another realm, from the unseen, and manifest it. So is it with thought. Is it real? Let your imagination show you the realm of your own spirit, for instance, the part of you that taps into other realms naturally. Listen to your spirit and realize that you are but a novice of life and that there is so much more to learn. Suddenly, everything is awesome again, everything is new, and you are but a curious child with so much to learn. Welcome to the real world!
Trust that you have within you everything you need to form a life, that you have the strength, the perseverance, the knowledge and wisdom that will attract all that you need to create your own destiny. And then, once you trust yourself, express gratitude for the life you are in, for the simple pleasure of sunlight on a cold day, the song of a bird heralding spring, the stars looking down on you at night. Be grateful for what is, and be grateful for what is to surely come.
The energy of change is around us and in us too! -Photo by Jan Ketchel
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.
What are we all hanging around waiting for? -Photo by Jan Ketchel
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
Our path lies always before us… eagerly awaiting our next step. – Photo by Jan Ketchel
There was never a doubt in my mind that life was a journey. As a young child, I envisioned this journey as a long and meandering path that began somewhere to the left of my vision and traversed to the right, stretching far into the future. There was no beginning that I could ever see and every step forward was a mystery, for I had no idea where I was going. So begins the introduction to my next book, The Edge of the Abyss, Volume 2.
We are all on our own paths. It has never been hard for me to envision the path I myself am on, but it has often been hard to see where I was going, for what reason, and how things would unfold as I took my journey through life. I am able to look back now and see what I could not see as a child, for I had not, at that point, journeyed very far or been in a position to ponder deeper meaning. Now when I look back, I see how everything in my life is strung together, every moment linked, every step leading me on to the next step. Each moment and each step was right, I see that now, though while in the midst of living many of those moments and taking some of those steps I could not have had such a perspective, for when in the turmoil of life clarity is often hard to come by.
Now I get to watch others take their journeys, watch them live through their moments of uncertainty, take their unsure steps, wondering where it will all take them. I watch with awe and with awareness that each one of us on this earth is endowed with all we need to walk the path that lies before us. I have learned to let people go, to bear the tension of watching them stumble, make mistakes, get up again and keep going. When I was young, I could not wait to leave everything behind and begin life anew, in my own way. I remember this when I watch others set out into life, remember how uncertain and frightening it was to leave home and go into the world, but at the same time so thrilling.
We are all responsible for ourselves. Once we grow up, reach a certain age, become adults, it’s up to us to take off into life and make something of ourselves. It’s what life is all about, making a meaningful life for ourselves. Some people have a vision of what that life will look like and others have no idea. Those who know plan accordingly, but those who don’t know are free to roam. Roaming is good too, and many a life has been built upon roaming. I think of the beat generation and my generation that grew up in the 1960s, restless and in touch with something besides the “American Dream.”
I don’t think there is an American Dream anymore, it fell out of popularity a long time ago. Now we are world citizens; we are everyone. How then can we separate ourselves from everyone and pretend that we are something special, that we are more that someone else living on the other side of the world? A lot of what we find interesting these days came from the other side of the world, from ancient sources: yoga and meditation, Buddhism and vegetarianism, the principles of yin and yang, the desire to be spiritually whole. I did not grow up with these things. They met me as I took my journey, intersecting my path, things I picked up along the way that made sense to me, that I saw value in, things that made my life vital and meaningful.
Now I dream my own dreams… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
My path has been deeply challenging at times and spectacularly beautiful at other times. As I look back now, I see it in all of its glory, and I see all of its gory details too. I would not have it otherwise. When I get stuck or depressed these days, I don’t stay there too long. I know that I am the maker of my own life, that I create my own reality. And so, when I’m feeling lost or worried, I remind myself of this. “Create a new reality if you don’t like the one you’re in!” I tell myself, and I find it really isn’t that hard to do. It might be as simple as letting myself feel a different way, allowing myself to be who and how I want to be, giving myself permission to see everything from a totally different perspective.
It’s what I’ve been doing my whole life, creating my own reality, striving to make it as joyous a journey as possible. One step at a time.
