This year, a bunny has set up refuge in our backyard sanctuary, affectionately called Camp Ketchel.
As we descend the hill and go into our screened abode Bunny sits totally still in the grass save for its mouth, which always seems to be munching, food or not. Bunny lets us pass within a couple of feet, clearly relaxed with our energy; we are not the danger.
The danger is all around, however, be it the fox family that lives very near, or an owl, or perhaps even the occasional eagle that makes its rounds. Death is but an instant away. This is nature. This is nature’s deepest truth: we are all stalked by the greatest predator of all: death. No one escapes.
In the meantime, Bunny eats, ears perked, always alert as it forages food for survival. Bunny has a friend, perhaps its mother who no longer accepts the role; all must take responsibility for their own lives.
Bunny engages friend in play. They pause in their eating and spring several feet into the air, jumping over one another in pure abandon, their customary alertness to danger momentarily relaxed. Play is part of nature, as important as eating and protecting. The bunny’s playful moment might indeed be the predator’s opportunity but that doesn’t matter, nature’s imperative to play must be enacted, regardless of cost.
Humans are animals as well. Though we hide behind a mote of reason and civilization, the truth is that the predator is always stalking. Despite all our medical genius no one and nothing can change our ultimate appointment with death.
At a primal level, the animal within us is well aware of this truth. On a primal level we are no different than the bunny, always watching, waiting, listening for the predator’s knock. Hence, anxiety is, at least on some level, a normal primal feeling in everyday human life. To think this shouldn’t be would be to deny our human animal reality. We may indeed be spirit beings who will live in infinity, but our animal selves will most assuredly die.
But let us learn from Bunny as well. As important as it is to be on our guard, it is equally important for us to completely release our guard and relax into pure play. Nature absolutely demands this of us. We must play with abandon to fulfill our animal nature.
We must allow ourselves to breathe deeply into the abdomen and break the constriction of rigid fear. We must completely relax our muscles, going deeper into calm and utter joy in our animal being. And when we are called back to alertness and fear, we must acquiesce and be present to it.
This opposition within our primal selves, of fear and play, can only be resolved by allowing ourselves to oscillate between each pole, flowing in accord with the true nature of each moment.
We’re all just trying to figure out the tangled mess of existence… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
They say that to truly experience something we should walk in the shoes of another. To fully experience another’s pain and another’s joy, to weather the good times and the bad, to be discriminated against, to be judged, to be turned away for some reason, hated for some reason, or despised because of who we are is the road to compassion.
Compassion however begins at home, within the self. If we never turn inward and never gain insight into what makes us tick we will never be able to truly experience compassion. We might say we are compassionate beings, but compassion is without borders, without restriction, and compassion does not discriminate.
Compassion takes the view that we are all the same, souls on evolutionary journeys, that we are all beings of light and energy, with endlessly infinite possibility. To find out if we are truly compassionate beings, we must ask ourselves: Do I truly see everyone that way, as beings of light and energy? And then we must be honest with what arises from deep within.
Today, as I read the news of the great migrations into Europe, I see a microcosm of what is to come, the same energy on the move that is happening on an environmental level. Things are being destroyed in one form or another and living beings, evolutionarily keyed to survival, are moving to better, higher, cooler ground. It’s happening all over the planet; species are dying; extinctions are happening.
I do believe that people, on the whole, are compassionate, caring beings. But at the same time they are afraid of change, of anything that might impose on their stable existence. Let others suffer, but don’t bring any of your personal problems into my backyard. Well, I think we all have to get used to the fact that the problems belong to all of us and this world is all one big backyard now. We’ve all made it that way. And just as true compassion is without borders, we have to have a world without borders too, if we are to truly be the compassionate beings we say we are.
So many people are fearful of others, fearful of their differences, perceived ideas of things they know nothing about, perpetuating stories and lies that have circulated the globe like folktales, harbingers of hate and discrimination. In the end we are all flesh and blood, with emotions and feelings, as mixed up and confused as the next person, and we are all facing death at the end of our time here. There is nothing that makes us different there.
Fear keeps us isolated and contained. But fear is usually something inside us, something that has been festering and brewing since childhood, things we were taught that may not be true at all. When we face our own personal fears in the right way, with compassion for ourselves and those who hurt, discriminate, or cause us pain, we access our fearlessness. And true compassion is fearless too. In facing our fears and our pain with compassion we release ourselves of all that keeps us locked in and locked out of the truly compassionate world we all wish for.
Compassion is in the simple beauties all around us… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Perhaps the new world we all wish for will have a new name, no longer called Earth, it will be called Compassion. To become ready to walk down the road toward Compassion, we must first walk down our personal road of fear, and meet head on all that confronts us as we migrate through the borders and fears within. It is the only way to reach Compassion.
One at a time, if we take the trip we can make the world truly compassionate, fearless, without borders, nobody excluded, anywhere. That is the new world of Compassion.
In 2003, while in the process of a shamanic recapitulation, which I have written extensively about in my books as well as my blogs, I discovered something important. I knew that change would not happen, not even consciously-willed change, such as adopting new habits, if I didn’t completely rid myself of the root cause of my problems.
In recapitulation, we constantly reenter the center of who we are, facing our shadows and discovering our truths… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
As a practicing hypnotist I became well aware of this. A hypnotist cannot change anyone or anything. A hypnotist only makes suggestions as to how change may come about, but real change only comes from within. Too many times people look for a “quick fix,” but the truth is there are no quick fixes. Yes, there are plenty of techniques for achieving calmness and steadiness, techniques that provide relaxing effects, but longterm change requires patience and deep work on the self.
My discovery—that change can only happen if the root cause is eradicated—is not new, but when I discovered it for myself I felt as if I HAD discovered it. This is a phenomenon of deep inner work, as we tread into the territory of ancient knowledge where that which has not yet been revealed is revealed, as if for the very first time.
Anyone doing deep work has the opportunity to discover such phenomena, in a personally meaningful and pertinent way, making such experiences strikingly unique and helpful. Such phenomenal discoveries, if taken seriously and acted upon, have the possibility to become the great catalysts they portend to be, leading to real and lasting change.
During the recent Mercury Retrograde, which I know many people experienced in very potent ways, I entered the whirlwind of its energy too and barely had time to pause for breath. Confrontational circumstances arose repeatedly, old issues were revisited, changes occurred, and I was given the opportunity to discover a lot of things. How far have I really come? The lessons of this most recent Mercury retrograde were many. It was a good time for all of us to test what we’ve done with our lives and to perhaps discover that we really have changed and we will continue to change because we’re ready to do so.
In 2003, as I was recapitulating my childhood and discovering the root cause of all that plagued me then, Mercury was also retrograde, four times that year. For most of that year I simultaneously and repeatedly faced my deepest core issue: fear. I was afraid of everything, I discovered.
Like invasive vines, our core issues will not stop growing until we totally eradicate them! – Photo by Jan Ketchel
My challenge then was to face and release myself from the clutches of all-pervasive fear, completely eradicating it from my being, for I knew that to embrace any idea of change without that complete eradication was just a cover up, another avoidant behavior, many of which I was very skilled at. How could I truly change if I refused to change myself at the deepest level, if I continued to ignore that core issue? I knew that the intent to change, by itself, no matter how strong, wasn’t going to have any effect without complete and conscious eradication of what really controlled me.
I knew that eradication of the fear would also provide room for change. If I was no longer consumed by fear, I’d have energy for other things. To aid in that process, I envisioned making space inside my body. The absence of fear, I envisioned, would create enough room in my physical body to allow for the change I so desired. Until the fear was gone I was just pushing it around inside me, restocking it, re-encapsulating it in some other body part, not getting rid of it as I should. I also knew that if I continued that habit I would never be free of the pain that plagued my physical body.
Once I became aware of the reason for the fear, I could deal with it. At the time, I wondered: How can you tackle something you don’t know about? I knew I had to continue the deep work of recapitulation, the technique that was proving to be the answer to all my questions, if I was to discover the remaining mysteries of myself and my past. It was the path to knowing myself on the deepest level.
So, as I dove deeper into the recapitulation process and deeper into my inner world, my inner self, and my past, the deeper mysteries of who I was and what controlled me became very clear. At the time, I also knew that I had to find a new way to tackle the fear; not in the old way of holding it in and avoiding or running from it, but by facing it, getting the truth of it, and letting it release, without restriction, to flow out of my body once and for all.
It was the final stage of my shamanic recapitulation, to let go of everything that I held inside me, thinking that I needed it or that it served a purpose. I discovered that fear had no real purpose, it was just an old habit, and that it had a sneaky way of holding me back from fully living. Once I faced, resolved and released the many faces of fear, I advanced into a new reality and new life. In addition, the phenomenal discoveries that punctuated my deep inner work during my recapitulation have never ceased to visit, enlighten, and inspire me.
Everything comes in its own time; what we need and what we are ready for is revealed at the right time. I learned that during my recapitulation too; as difficult as many of my memories were to face, I truly was ready to confront and resolve them so that I could eradicate the fear that I had been bound in my entire life, that had me physically bound in pain and inertia. I discovered that fear was nothing more than a habit, that it only really existed because I was attached to it. Like worry, it was just another entity not worthy of my attention.
Eventually, we emerge, centered and happy… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Our core issues come to challenge us. What frightens or bothers us generally will show up during times of change, whether change that we instigate or change forced upon us.
As we change and move forward in life, we are able to look back with the kind of clarity that a Mercury Retrograde brings, along with its dizzying energy of confrontation and recapitulation, so that we can come out of it having moved along to a new level on our journeys. As we turn back to look at the distance we’ve come, we notice that we really have changed, perhaps in small ways, perhaps in greater ways, but changed we are nonetheless!
In support, Jan
NOTE: Chuck wrote about a similar process a few weeks ago in his blog entitled: Face, Feel & Absorb
In a matter of hours we can be in another country… That’s how close we are to each other too! – Photo by Jan KetchelHere is a special message from Jeanne, urging us all to get on the same page. I asked her to comment on the situation in the world today, specifically around the spread of the ebola virus. It’s a very passionate appeal to all of us to get our acts together and become who we truly are. I hope it’s helpful.
Lovingly and most humbly channeled for you all, Jan
