Tag Archives: evolution

A Day in a Life: It’s A Step-By-Step Process!

Every morning the sheep leave the barn...they head out into the field. Is that fulfilling enough? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Every morning the sheep leave the barn…
they head out into the field.
Is that fulfilling enough?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

If we are to live as conscious, alert beings we must find out who we truly are. If we are to get ourselves out of our stuck places, we must discover how we got stuck to begin with. If we are to be energetically aware and alive, we must free ourselves from old energy that has attached to us and constantly drains our energy.

We might not even know that our energy is being drained, or that we are not fully consciously present and aware until someone points it out to us. We might not know that we are energetically depleted either until we fail or fall down, with absolutely no energy left to go on. Often our ego rushes in to defend us, as we point out to the Truthsayer how perfect we really are, how on top of everything and in control we feel, how we know ourselves better than they do and how impertinent they are to point out to us something that just isn’t so!

It isn’t easy to face what lies at our deepest core and directs our lives, old defenses and personality traits from childhood perhaps that still rule. When we feel stuck, it’s pretty certain that one of those old powerful allies will rear it’s head, asking us to call it forth again, to save us from having to be challenged. Far better to stay the same, it says, safer then. But we are adults now. We’ve all grown up and had to do adult things and so we must fully embrace our adult selves if we are to face our old childhood allies.

In addition, once we realize that we are here to evolve on our spiritual journey, to finally awaken and release ourselves from the cyclical suffering of life on this earth—from samsara as the Buddhists call it—we are going to be challenged to break out of and through our old patterns and behaviors. Once we begin the journey of awareness those challenges will come consistently and unrelentingly, often at the most inopportune of times. Our adult self must stay fully present in the face of those old allies, tell them that the gig is up, that we are leaving them behind, intending to move on now. But how do we do that without suffering even more?

We all land somewhere, but where we go from there is up to us... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
We all land somewhere,
but where we go from there is up to us…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Well, it’s a step-by-step process, a one-day-at-a-time kind of thing. It’s painful; no doubt about it. But as we string together those individual days they begin to link into a growing span, a little more golden each day. Over time we begin to see positive change in our attitudes and we notice that we make different choices. Our childhood allies don’t pop up so often and our adult self is more flowing and eager for life. We begin to experience ourselves as changing beings. Eventually a whole new lifestyle develops. Suddenly, one day we realize that we have actually changed a lot! We are no longer the being we once were.

In taking our small steps each day, we are choosing to take a new path, and that alone is good work! We can choose to take that first step right now, or we may decide to wait for the next lifetime. We may even decide that we haven’t fully achieved our highest potential yet. We may desire to come back to fulfill it in our next life.

I once met a woman who discovered a new part of herself late in life. She had healed herself on many deep levels, in the process discovering so many alternative and energetic healing modalities that she had never previously been exposed to. She fully embraced herself as a reincarnated being and knew that she should strive to evolve beyond this realm, yet she had finally discovered something that fit her like a glove. She realized her greatest potential as a human being was as of yet unfulfilled. She decided that she wanted to live another life, and so she fully intended to return as an energetic healer, to help others find their energetic connection too.

She was 84 when I met her more than a decade ago, with a brightness in her eyes and a glowing spirit that could not wait to come back. She declared this with such unbending intent. I lost touch with her, but I hope she fulfills that intent. It felt right when she stated it, and it still feels right. It’s the kind of healing energy the world needs more of!

In the meantime, we all have choices to make. Are we ready to become as aware as that woman became. Are we ready to fully explore our own greatest potential, to declare that we are unfulfilled, or actually quite fulfilled? Are we ready to accept our appointment with what comes next with such unbending intent? Is this lifetime enough; will it be our final one? To find out we must face our deepest truths—that which keeps us stuck—and take back our energy.

The fearless little ant... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
The fearless little ant…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

It takes gumption and a good amount of fearlessness, but we all have those qualities inside us. We just have to embrace them, one step and one day at a time. In clearly differentiating between and separating our childhood allies from our adult self, we take the first step on our journey to wholeness and fulfillment.

Always taking that next step forward, wondering where it will lead me today,
Jan

Readers of Infinity: Be Open


Allow the self exposure to life… to be open to what comes! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Allow the self exposure to life…
to be open to what comes!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Dear Readers of Infinity,

Today’s channeling message from Jan and Jeanne comes in audio. Please let us know what you think of this new format, which we hope everyone has the capacity to listen to. It should work on all devices. Thanks for listening!

A Day in a Life: Visitors From Another Era

We are privileged to observe an evolutionary happening... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
We are privileged to observe an evolutionary happening…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

I cannot help but ponder our visitors, the cicadas, come from the depths of the earth to mate and die, all within a few weeks time. What’s the point? Chuck reminds me that it’s nature, archetypal, doing what it has always done, programmed in a way that we find hard to fathom. I get that, but I keep looking for some reason, some purpose. Are we humans supposed to learn something from them?

Are the cicadas beneficial in any way? Is there some symbiotic relationship between the cicadas and nature that we’re missing? Like the bees pollinating so that other life can survive? The only benefit I see is that the cicadas offer lots of food for the birds and other critters. Like mice, they come in the billions, and even though a couple of million might get picked off there are still plenty of them left to do their thing.

“What a boring life!” someone said the other day, referring to the cicadas seventeen years spent underground. I couldn’t help but compare them to us. We humans take about seventeen years to emerge from our childhoods, which are often lonely, trapped as we are by the dictates of our families and society. Perhaps our childhoods are not much different from the isolated cicadas living in their underground tunnels. Once we leave home, we often do what the cicadas do too, though at a slower pace; find mates, perhaps have children, live through our lives until we too die.

When I stand on our deck, the sound is deafening, a symphony to rival Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, the cicadas triumphantly playing their instruments. I hear strings, percussion, and woodwinds. I hear chanting and rousing church choirs. I hear life stirring, knowing it has so little time. I hear that archetypal element that Chuck brought up, declaring itself with impeccable intent.

Last night I dreamed. A voice spoke to me. “The hardest part of life,” it said, “is getting here. Once here, flow. Learn to flow because this is your life. You can’t stop it, but you can choose how to live it.” When I woke up I saw that I had been granted the answer to my question: What are we supposed to learn from the cicadas?

Such a struggle to birth... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Such a struggle to birth…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

In my dream, I saw all of our lives, all of our previous efforts to evolve gathering the strength and wisdom to make this life the one that finally carries us to fruition, to fulfillment of our soul’s journey. There is great intent and effort behind that one purpose: for us to evolve. Each time we are born we renew that intent, to make this the life that tackles and resolves our core issues. In my dream, I saw the soul’s struggle to emerge more fully with each birth, much like the cicada’s struggle to emerge from its casing. Those previous lives are the hard part. Our archetypal past is the hard part. Setting that intent to evolve and getting it to pierce through the veils of this life is the hard part.

Now that we are here, my dream seemed to be saying, there is little to do except live out that intent to evolve. Much like the cicadas, we often don’t know why we are here. We too are archetypal beings, until we decide to break the pattern of reincarnated lives. Unlike the cicadas we have the power to change our patterns of behavior.

The other part of my dream, suggests that in order to break through the boring life cycles we must flow with what life presents us with. In the dream, I was aware that fighting and protesting about our lives will get us nowhere. Only in acquiescing to the true facts of who we are and how we got here, and then making some real choices to change our circumstances will we evolve and live a more fulfilled and enlightened life. It’s our choice. If we are going to be victims, then we will continue to live out boring cicada-like lives, endlessly returning every lifecycle to go through the same cicada-like patterns of behavior.

We humans do have a bit more going for us. Perhaps, if we could grasp the bigger picture, we could change. Perhaps, if we could fathom the meaning of our interconnectedness, our link to all within the human family, across the globe, we could change. Perhaps we could embrace our innocence and our true abilities to love one another. Perhaps we could learn to be a kinder gentler race. Perhaps we could actually learn to love ourselves for who we are and what we’ve been through, enough to intend healing for ourselves, enough to allow our true purpose to unfold—our evolutionary purpose. Perhaps we could soften our controls and flow with life, allowing ourselves to join with that kinder and gentler race of humanity that we are really all part of. If we really woke up, then we might begin to take seriously what we’re actually doing to the world, to the earth, to our fellow human beings.

Will we leave more behind us than this ghostly imprint left by a muddy robin smacking into the window? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Will we leave more behind us than this ghostly imprint left by a muddy robin smacking into the window?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

I wonder what the cicadas will find here when they return in seventeen years? What will be left? Will we have so poisoned the earth that they’ll die in their isolation chambers? If they emerge, will there still be trees for them to sing from, to lay their eggs in, to hatch in the ground beneath? Will we humans resolve all the problems we’ve created in the next seventeen years? Do we have seventeen years? I don’t think so. That’s what the cicadas are telling us; we don’t have time. Now matters.

We all need to act on our own behalf right now and make some personal decisions about how we want to live this life and how we want to impact our planet’s future and our fellow human beings. Whether we evolve beyond this world or whether we return for another lifecycle, one way or another what we decide to do now is going to matter. Like my dream said, we have the power to choose how we want to live, no matter what our circumstances. And that is how we are different from the cicadas!

Chirping away, but seriously,
Jan

In case you haven’t seen this: Here is a great time-lapse film about the cicadas by film maker Samuel Orr. It’s really quite an amazing little film. We posted this on our Riverwalker Facebook page and in this week’s channeled message, so some of you may have already seen it, but for those who haven’t, here is the link to this short film.

Readers of Infinity: Advice For The Changing Self

Here is Jeanne’s guidance for the week. Have a great one!

It's a struggle, but keep going! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
It’s a struggle, but keep going!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Keep doing what you are doing to change yourself. If you are trying to do too many things, pick one and stick with it. Pick what feels most resonant and conducive to you, your life, and your inner process.

Simplify your practice and simplify your life. Remain committed to the path you have chosen. Do not get drawn too far afield. Return always to your path and continue onward. Only in a focused and concerted practice will you find what you seek. It does take work, but let it be joyous work. Let it be loving, kind and compassionate work on the self, even as you care for and about others.

Work on the self is the greatest challenge and the greatest adventure of life upon that earth. You will find the answers you seek in the land of the self. And those answers will apply to everything you encounter outside of the self as well. Make your inner work count by simplifying and committing to an ever-deepening practice, a practice of change. This is how to evolve.

A note from Jan and Chuck along the lines of change and evolution: Here is a great time-lapse film about the cicadas by Samuel Orr. It’s really quite an amazing little film. We posted this yesterday on our Riverwalker Facebook page, so some of you may have already seen it, but for those who don’t do Facebook, here it is the link to this short film.

A Day in a Life: Always Change & Change Is Good

Seasonal change is inevitable…ice on the deck this morning…

Change is good. This is one of my favorite mottos. Change is good. Back in the days before I had done a shamanic recapitulation I had another, similar, motto that went like this: Always change. Back then I was suffering from PTSD (Post-traumatic Stress Disorder), though I didn’t know this. But even so I knew that change was good, I just didn’t really know why, not on a deeper level anyway. Now I know that it was something at a deeper level that was stirring me to always change, PTSD acting as a catalyst that eventually led to self-discovery and real change. The form that change takes under the auspices of PTSD, however, is very different from change that takes place once freed of PTSD.

Back in the PTSD days, change came knocking in uncomfortable stirrings to move, to always change, to change my environment in some way, whether it be changing the furniture in every room of the house every few weeks or uprooting and moving to another apartment, another house, another city, another state, another country, another relationship. I did all of these things, under the auspices of always change, restlessness my constant companion. But something at a deeper level was always asking me: Why do I do this? Why do I have to keep moving and changing? Why can’t I just settle down?

I felt like I was running from something, that if I stopped in one place long enough whatever it was would catch up with me and that would be the death of me. For at some deeper level, I knew that death was what was chasing me—death in one form or another.

Now, on one level, this is true, for death is pursuing us all the time, reminding us that in the end it will get us. In my case, I sensed death differently, the stench of it deep inside me already. Although I didn’t know it, that smell of death—that I could never run far enough away from—was trying to alert me to what I carried inside me: a dying spirit, a dying innocence, a dying sense of hope, for these are some of the things that PTSD robs us of. Until we stop and face what the stench of death is trying to alert us to, we will constantly seek change in our outer world, to find just the right place where we will feel comfortable, safe, and at ease. I went into my late forties always changing before I stopped and faced what was pursuing me, the past that was embodied in that diagnosis of PTSD, a past I had no memory of.

Fires of change like kundalini energy burning through us…

When I first met Chuck, he presented me with those four little letters—PTSD. Oh, so that’s what’s wrong with me! At last I had a name for all that had driven me in so many unsettling ways, a name that felt right. “Yes, I get it, I suffer from PTSD,” I said to myself, “I just never knew it.” Now I had a home, a slot to fit into in the world, I had PTSD. But I would not stay there. I could not settle for long. I refused to be categorized, tagged and diagnosed, for always change was still my motto after all. And so I told myself to change, that change was good, that it was what I needed in order to heal. And so I began a changing, healing journey out of PTSD and into new life. Long and painful though that journey was I would not, in a million years, wish to live the way I used to live.

Now when I say that change is good, I’m talking about the deepest kind of change, change of the self at the deepest level, from the inside out. This involves letting go of everything that has upheld the world we’ve lived in—everything we’ve been taught and taught ourselves, everything we’ve believed and couldn’t bear to believe, everything we’ve created and controlled in order to be safe. This involves learning to let go of our judgments, resentments, fears, and regrets, opening instead to the truth of our infallibilities, our frailties, our imperfections, and our inflations. It involves discovering what it really means to be humble, to live simply, in balance with all of nature, taking only what is necessary. It involves learning to love ourselves so we can one day be available to love another, so we can understand what it means to be loved, and how to give and receive love on a far more expansive, interconnected level of consciousness, far beyond the needs of the self. It involves letting go of our ego selves, detaching from that which has held us in our defended states for so long, making way in the process for a new self. It involves allowing this new self to emerge out of the stench and fear of death that has encapsulated us in all of its forms and fully acknowledge that yes, death is the ultimate catalyst to evolutionary change. It involves discovering for the self what it means to be an evolving being, here in this lifetime to discover and resolve an evolutionary challenge, given another opportunity to get it right.

Opportunities abound, coming at many times throughout our lives. Our challenge is, indeed, to always change, to go with the flow of our lives, accepting full responsibility for where we are at all times, accepting that we are not perfect, that we are human beings, but also that we are evolutionary beings as well, spiritual beings seeking something higher, something far beyond our PTSD, our boredom, our fear, our self-pity and our hopelessness.

Seeking always a higher evolved self…

The deepest kind of change means facing who we’ve become and daring ourselves to become someone far more evolved, far more connected to life on this planet while striving always to become far more aware of the spiritual possibilities of all things, and far more aware of all life as sacred.

The creative, urging us on one level to do something about ourselves or our environment, stirs in us at all times. Perhaps we project it outwardly as I did, as an artist constantly creating something new, some new picture, sculpture, dance, play, music. But after a while a deeper creativity comes knocking, asking us to channel the ultimate creation: a new self. And you know what, it’s really okay to do that, to totally change and become someone new, for after all, in the end, it’s the evolution of the self that we’re all here to spur on to a new level. This is why, I believe, we’re all here—to always change—and such change is always good.

I am a changing being and so are you,
Jan