Tag Archives: dream

A Day in a Life: I Can’t Have What I Want

I cannot have what I envision... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
I cannot have what I envision…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

I dream of a small house. I design it with a certain style in mind. I go to the lumber yard and pick out the wood I want for the exterior. I want the wooden panels to be laid vertically. I see the house in my mind’s eye. It’s so perfect. After leaving my design and exact instructions for laying the boards, I leave the construction to others.

Just as I had visualized the house, I now visualize a giant golden goose egg. I set out to attain this egg. I see it in the distance, large and glowing, but I never reach it. I’m disappointed.

I return to the construction site. There sits my new house, but I see immediately that the exterior has not been done to my specifications; the boards have all been laid horizontally rather than vertically. At first I’m angry; it’s not what I wanted. Why didn’t they do what I asked? But then I see that the house is a much better design than the one I had envisioned. With the exterior boards laid horizontally the house has a palatial, expanded look, a more open look. Even the wood is different from the wood I had chosen; it’s lighter and has more intricate lines and patterns. I decide that the house is actually much better than the one I had planned. Now I really like it!

It suddenly dawns on me that the search for the golden goose egg offered a similar process. I was not going to be allowed to have the golden egg of my vision! I went on a wild goose chase, but in the end I received something much better!

As my dream points out, sometimes our ideas of what should be are not right for us. They may, in fact, be limiting and containing rather than advancing us in new directions. Sure, the idea of attainment of a golden goose egg implies a great spiritual achievement, but sometimes we just have to acquiesce to the energy of what is.

As my new house implies, if we allow ourselves to expand and change we allow something else to take over and lead us, perhaps achieving that golden goose egg in a different, unplanned way. This, I believe, is how the universe brings us what we really need. In learning to let go of control we naturally learn to accept what comes to greet us in our daily lives. We can struggle all we want to make things happen, but often the energy of the world gives us something else, an alternative that might just be the best thing for us. In our disappointments we might actually find the golden goose egg, just in a different form.

I receive the golden goose egg, just in an unexpected form... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
I receive the golden goose egg,
just in an unexpected form…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The truth is that we aren’t really in control of anything, and if we can accept this and trust the energy of nature and the universe, we might find ourselves in a much better place in the long run. We might find that we are being guided to where we need to go, or to what we must face or receive next in our search for wholeness.

Can we accept the guidance of the universe and let go of our need to plan and control? It’s really the only way to truly change.

And so, I gladly step into my new house, constructed by the energy of change, offering new and different horizons. Yes, there’s a golden goose egg in here too. I just have to see it for what it really is!

Enjoying the new house!
Jan

A Day in a Life: There Are No Obstacles

Sometimes a brick wall is just a brick wall... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Sometimes a brick wall is just a brick wall…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Everything had been flowing along nicely. Everything I’d set my intent to and planned for had gone swimmingly. And then, all of a sudden it seemed, things ground to a halt, the flow dried up. Obstacles appeared.

Last night, I dreamt all night of driving racecars on a track. Sometimes I was inside the racecar, zooming around the track, the obstacle course. At other times I was playing with toy racecars on a toy racetrack. But the scenario was always the same. At some point along the way, I’d come to a big hill that I just could not get up. “Oh,” I’d say, “I’m not supposed to go this way.” And I’d turn around and go a different way.

By the end of my night of dreaming, I understood that if we are living in alignment with nature, in the Tao, there are no true obstacles; everything is there for a reason.

Some obstacles, it becomes abundantly clear, are impossible to overcome. We might be driving along the road to find it blocked by a fallen tree. Of course we could sit there and steam about it, but it’s pretty obvious that we won’t get through. It’s clear that we have to turn around and go a different way.

At other times, obstacles arise that are less clearly interpreted as obstacles. We might be trying to reach someone. They don’t answer their phone or email, they don’t respond to texts, they don’t appear on Facebook. For days they refuse to be available. We get angry, take it personally, look to blame or imagine the worst. But in reality, an obstacle has appeared, telling us that it is not the right time to make contact. We must pull back and wait patiently for a sign to show us differently.

The way I see it, when an obstacle appears, the universe is showing us that it has other plans for us. Do we waste our energy fighting back, or do we acquiesce and say, “Okay, where are you taking me? What am I supposed to learn?”

In my dream, every time I came to the big hill, I’d try like heck to get up it, even though I had already done it all night long and never succeeded. It didn’t matter, the hill was there and I was, of course, going to give it a shot. I accepted the challenge. By the end of my night of dreaming, however, I got the hang of it. By the umpteenth time I’d arrived at the hill, I was finally ready to accept the opposite challenge: to face that the hill was there for another reason altogether, that it was time to stop trying to transcend it and instead turn in a totally new direction.

Sometimes what at first appears to be closing in on us is really showing us our path of heart... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Sometimes what at first appears to be closing in on us is really showing us our path of heart…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Sometimes our challenges are posed by nature, at other times by our own pigheadedness, our inability to be flexible and flowing. We want things to go a certain way and by golly they had better go according to plan! It’s pretty hard to give up our dreams and our perfect scenarios to the possibility of disaster and defeat. If we are going to be in alignment with nature, with our lives as they naturally unfold, however, we must not only accept but face what our obstacles might be trying to tell us about ourselves.

We tend to want to blame, to point out how others have ruined things for us or disappointed us. But once we remove our outward projections, we might find that something really important is being placed in front of us, something we might not be able to fathom at the time. The universe might have other plans for us.

In my dream, I was presented with acquiescing to that which I could not control or override. In my real life, obstacles often reveal themselves in more subtle ways, but they are nonetheless clearly there, asking me to pause and reconsider. Am I just wasting my energy here for no reason? Am I pushing for something that is just not going to be good for me? If I get up that hill, is there something far more complicating and devastating awaiting me on the other side?

I have had several occurrences in my own life where, had I proceeded in the direction I was going in, disaster awaited. I have sidestepped death on more than one occasion. And so, I know how the universe seeks to get our attention, to alert us to danger, in subtle and not so subtle ways.

When we force something that is just not going our way, we may be getting ourselves into serious trouble. My dream was challenging me to take the obstacles seriously, but to be open and flowing as well, to learn acquiescence to the signs and synchronicities that arise in the natural course of life.

Nature acquiesces to the end of one season and the birth of the next... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Nature acquiesces to the end of one season and the birth of the next…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

If we can avoid getting too wrapped up in self-doubt or self-recriminatinion, without going to blame or judgment, obstacles can be used to guide us forward. They offer us the opportunity to question our reality. What am I being shown here? Am I too controlling? Is my ego inflated? Have I lost my connection to my physical and emotional self? Is my illness, my failure, my loss or lack really leading me to my fulfillment, to something totally new and unexpectedly good, rather than the negative disaster I immediately interpret it as?

And, better still, as my dream points out: if we are truly in the Tao, in alignment with nature, with the synchronicities that arise in our lives, there are really no obstacles. Everything comes to us for a reason. Sometimes, it’s only in hindsight that we see this. Sometimes its only in hindsight that we are thankful for all the obstacles that have come into our lives to save us and project us forward into more fulfilling and adventurous lives.

Sometimes it’s just time to turn and go in a new direction!
Jan

Chuck’s Place: Your 4th Dimensional Self Sent You Here

Can't wear it when I go... - Photo of Chuck's Jacket by Jan Ketchel
Can’t wear it when I go…
– Photo of Chuck’s Jacket by Jan Ketchel

We issue forth from infinity, a seed planted with the intent to individuate, to become a unique life with a specific purpose in this world. All seeds share the same fate: to become fully what they are. And when this life ends, we return from whence we came: “Going home behind the curtain, going home without the costume that I wore,” -Sincerely, L. Cohen—from Going Home

All the while we are here, we seek our lost wholeness in the many masks of God we attach to, projections that reflect our infinite Selves. But, while here, we are also on a mission. Our infinite self, Brahman, must stay safely ensconced behind our bliss sheath, beyond our awareness, as we, in turn, seek our bliss in becoming the seed we are intended to be in this life.

Joseph Campbell, like Carlos Castaneda, encouraged us to fully embrace and experience the life we are in. After all, our challenges are experiments from the fourth-dimensional Self, as Jung put it. For Jung, the fourth dimension was the dimension of quantum physics, which grasps the unitary interdependent nature of reality. It’s the dimension beyond space and time, where psyche and soma merge like a particle and a wave, in infinite oneness.

Jung designated our Brahman self, the Self, granting recognition to the part of us that is infinite, that lies behind the curtain. Less than one year before his death in 1961, Jung confided the following in a private letter:

…one can define a dream as an experiment of a four-dimensional nature. I have never tried even to describe this aspect of dreams, …because I have found that our public today is incapable of understanding. I considered it therefore my first duty to talk and write of things that might be understandable and thus would prepare the ground upon which one could later on explain the more complicated things…” –C. G. Jung Letters, Vol. 2

What does it really mean anyway? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
What does it really mean anyway?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Here, Jung hints that dreams, in sleeping and waking life, are experiments from the fourth-dimensional Self. The experimenter is the Self that lives in infinity. It is that Self that projects its seed of intent into this life. This higher Self intends the life we are sent to live in this third dimension of time and space, birth and death. Jung suggests that it is this higher Self—seeking to view, enhance, and experience itself in an experimental life—that projects us into this life, to then live that intent, whichever way it goes, bringing back its recapitulated experience to infinity in dying.

The Shamans of Ancient Mexico came to the same conclusion: we are beings projected from infinity, granted awareness that may be enhanced through experience—whatever that might be—in a three dimensional life, which eventually ends and contributes its findings back to infinity.

From this perspective, we can see that we are always in two places at once: Self and ego self, eternal and transitory. Furthermore, the antagonists in our life, our petty tyrants, are necessary players in our quest to individuate. Our petty tyrants rattle our self-importance. In fact, by their merciless actions, they stamp out any flame of ego-worth. It can take years to emerge from the ashes of such abuse. Yet, freedom can only be obtained in accepting the true nature of things—that ego life is an illusive life, partitioned in third-dimensional reality.

If we drop our ego attachment yet maintain our awareness, we enter fourth-dimensional experience: enlightenment now. This is what our petty tyrants offer us. Our encounters with them tear apart any illusions of ego importance. We encounter fully the relativity of our life in this world.

Yup, everything dies. - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Yup, everything dies.
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

We are beings who are going to die, our lives are transitory. No need to build up a trust fund of worth to obtain immortality; it’s all a distraction. Our true purpose is to fully actualize the seed in keeping with the intent of our higher Self, without attachment to everlasting life in a temporary vehicle. This experience of bliss—fully actualizing the life in the seed—aligns us with that higher Self, without need for a protective sheath. We can handle the impact of our immortality while in our temporary vehicle. Here we join with our fourth-dimensional Self in our three-dimensional life, living now.

Quite an awesome experiment, Dr. Jung!
Chuck

Readers of Infinity: Life’s A Dream

Here is this week’s message from Jeanne, on the reality of creating your own life.

Today's dream... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Today’s dream…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Find a center of balance no matter where you are in your life. Even though you may be caught up in the turmoils of life, so will there be a spot within that turmoil to find rest and distance. Set your intent to not only find this place but to recognize it and utilize it, even in the worst of circumstances.

Remember: There is always calm within a storm, even if it is only in the moment before the storm hits or the moment after it strikes. Take the energy of that calmness within, fully experience it, and retain the markings of it within. Draw upon it later, for its experience will reside in you, its memory everlasting.

That is what you seek in order to find balance in daily life, memories of those moments of experience that have shifted you. In your experiences come the ability to control, to a certain degree, the content of your days. I advise allowing the self access to the ability to control the self by grabbing onto the experiences of calmness that have reigned throughout your life, the moments that remind you that nothing lasts forever, that everything changes, that life constantly shifts and adjusts itself. For growth is always life’s intent.

In your own lives, growth too is the intent. With this intent being your personal intent—even if you are unaware of it—be assured that everything that comes to you, each day, is leading and guiding you to grow, to face that which you must in order to move beyond fear and attachment.

Always find your balance within yourself. Pull up your anchor repeatedly as you shift, placing it in a new spot of calmness each day, depending on circumstances, and as you flow with life.

One day your calmness may lie in your dreams, so place your anchor there. Set your intent to learn as much as possible from your dreams. And then follow the guidance that comes to you.

On another day your calmness, your certainty, may lie in your creativity. Place your intent, your anchor there, and allow your creative self the expression it desires. This will send you into new energetic configuration, both mentally and physically, aligning your life more fully with your spirit’s intent. And remember that creativity takes many forms. Where your personal creativity lies may not be yet clear to you, but it’s there.

Seek balance each day. Take moments to sit in calmness and find your peace in where you are, fully aware that each day you are being guided to advance. Pretty soon, the anchoring calmness will become most natural, and you may even find that you are there without having to think about it. Then you will have the experience of your previous turmoil being only like a distant dream.

Remember it’s all a dream anyway. Which dream do you wish to dream today? It’s really up to you.

Chuck’s Place: Crossing the Bryant Park Bridge

I awaken from a dream crossing and can’t wait to ask Jan if there is in fact, somewhere in Brooklyn, a bridge called the Bryant Park Bridge. “Does it exist?” I ask, as I tell her my dream of crossing into New York City on a bridge of this name. She smiles, reminding me of the main library at Bryant Park in the heart of Manhattan. And then I get it, my dream bridge was the crossing to true knowledge, only to be obtained by daring to pass beyond the massive stone lions guarding its entrance.

We are all challenged to pass by the lions at the gate of true knowledge at some point in our lives...

We cross the ethereal Bryant Park Bridge whenever we allow ourselves deeper knowing of our multifaceted selves. The lions at the gates of each facet of true knowledge generate the emotional fires we must encounter, the proving grounds we must traverse to reach the truth at the heart of ourselves. Bearing that emotional energy, those fires of intensity, absolutely requires that our adult selves, our present selves, be fully present and aware.

We have long prepared for this encounter with the lions at the gate, as we have managed life across the bridge, back in Brooklyn so to speak—as in my dream—for decades. As adults we may finally find ourselves ready and willing to step into the fires, to withstand the tension, to breathe and release its bottled energy. Eventually, as the smoke fully clears, we are able to recover all the jewels, the diamonds of self awaiting discovery and recovery in the ashes.

Sometimes those fires that we must face are the feelings that were dissociated, cut off and walled off at the direction of the higher self to protect a younger, fledgling self from the shock of innocence interrupted.

The fires are always burning, awaiting our attention...

Sometimes those fires are the actual emotions and physical torments endured and, again, stored at the direction of the higher self whose sole concern is survival in the moment. This higher self is perfectly capable of discerning the capacity of the growing self to integrate, to fully know its experiences, and continue to grow. But it also knows that some things must wait until later, until another decade perhaps, when an older self has gathered the stability and readiness to withstand and release the energy of bottled emotion, finally ready to recover the innocent jewel of a waiting self.

Sometimes the fires to be encountered are the fires of judgment, shame, and blame that cast the self into hiding. Here the mature self enters that darkened courtroom and stands firmly with the sentenced younger self and, bearing all the feelings evoked by the judgments, allows the full truths to be revealed in the light of day. Those old judgments, fully revealed and fully felt, eventually lose their energy. This is the way to suspending judgment.

In the end, life lived becomes just that: the full truths of a life lived. Then we are freed to meet the living self that has stood waiting behind it all, anxiously and tenderly awaiting the moment of new life, in the library of true knowledge on the other side of the ethereal Bryant Park Bridge. This self has waited patiently for this moment, to be finally received as a genuine facet of the true diamond self.

Who knows when the Bryant Park Bridge will appear?

We accrue new facets of our diamond selves each time we dare to cross the ethereal Bryant Park Bridge, the bridge that appears when the triggers and synchronicities come to lead us into fuller recapitulation of our true selves.

When that bridge does finally appear and beckon us to cross, it is telling us that we, as adults, are ready to pass through the lions proving ground and pick up the treasures of knowledge that lie waiting. That is, the knowledge of our true selves, ready now to enter into new life…on the other side of the bridge.

At the library,
Chuck