From the dimly lit living room… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
I open my eyes. I know without looking that it’s time to get up. I pause to review the residue of the night’s journeys. Nothing pronounced.
It’s writing day. The Gods are clamoring as I cast my line into the pool of possibility. Jan and I sit in the dimly lit living room, around the glass table. Jan has a calling to light the candle, the one that lately doesn’t stay lit. I watch it struggle; it’s not going to make it. Jan gets another candle and ignites it from the dying flame. The light is strong and bright.
Slowly, dreams, readings, and world events begin to energize as we talk, to combat, to intertwine and finally, as we bear the tension, the synchronistic dance begins to reveal itself. I have my writing topic.
We step outside. It begins to rain. I realize that I’m being directed to go inward instead, to capture the choreography of this dance before the competing Gods of Light and Day steal the thunder of this revelation so recently come to me in the dimly lit living room.
Lao Tzu writes in the Tao Te Ching:
“Without going outside, you may know the whole world.
Without looking through the window, you may see the ways of heaven.”
Look to the kingdom within, I say. Where is Assad within? Who is he? He is a shadow God. He has gassed his people. Who is the God that poisons us within? Is it a food? Is it a substance? Is it a belief? The toxicity is evident now. Consciousness cannot ignore it.
Assad is a God of destruction. He is a God of dissolution, of death. And yet, he is simply the dark side of God. All Gods come with two faces, one of light and one of darkness, just as we do.
We constellate the God we need to address our current challenge. We are challenged now to face the destructive God that has held reign within us. Can we acknowledge our collusion with that God? Unless we are outright psychotic, we must grant access to that which controls us, however powerless or unaware we conceive ourselves to be.
What are the reigning attitudes, judgments, and compensatory self-destructive behaviors that we give license to every day? What God do we allow to rule our lives?
President Obama emerges as the God of Light, poised to take on the God of Darkness, but the world protests! It’s not about assuming some fervent corrective attitude to stamp out the darkness. The world populace has awoken from its groundhog day of slumber. Jimmy Carter calls for a peace conference. Obama turns it over to Congress. A brighter candle is lit. Let’s shed new light on the process. Consciousness must take responsibility to weigh the forces at work, to discern the truth, to be led to right action.
Don’t let the light go out! – Photo by Jan Ketchel
The God of Darkness, if we are indifferent, will be emboldened. Perhaps this is how we got here in the first place, our child selves feeling powerless, seeking relief and distraction. Clearly, if we allow our ego selves to be so dominated, we will be brought to our own destruction, even death. Perhaps there must be death and destruction of our current ego attitudes. New life always requires the sacrifice of old ways.
The righteousness of the God of Light must be challenged as well. 9/11 was, after all, the inevitable compensation for a world dominated by greed that rejected its own darkness. Eventually, the God of Darkness would need to exact revenge, level the playing field of the truth. That’s where we are today: 9/11—Take Two, with the possibility of consciousness—that faces all sides of the truth—trumping the old attack and root-out the evil “over there” approach with a new approach that takes responsibility for our own darkness.
Inwardly, our warrior selves must employ energy in bearing the tension of our psychic reality, giving way to changes that reflect the true needs of the Self. Each warrior that advances this cause within, synchronistically participates in the advance of consciousness to new frontiers without, with the opportunity for greater stability and new possibility on all fronts.
We are in the midst of great change. I see it all around me, in the people closest to me and in the world. No one has not changed in some way over the past few months, and even going further back, because change is constant. So, yes, we have all been changing for a long time. It is, however, most apparent right now.
Change comes to us in many ways, in many forms, in the apparent challenges we must face on a daily basis and in our not so apparent core issues. How we decide to react to change is what makes our journey what it is. Do we embrace change or do we hide from change? Do we go with gusto or do we hold ourselves back? Do we pretend it’s not happening, fearful of having to change, or do we seek it out, eager to get our lives going in a new direction?
The events of our lives, our dreams and our waking dreams, the things that happen to us, the signs and synchronicities that shape our experiences, come to guide us, to show us what we need to work on, how to go about it, and what direction we should take. We are constantly being shown who we are and who we have the potential to become. It’s in waking up to this bigger picture, to the oneness of it all, that we finally grasp that our journeys are orchestrated so that we may one day flow easily with the changes that come to greet us. For there is no denying that life is in constant flux and that our biggest challenge, our biggest anxiety-reducer, is to learn to flow with it.
Take nature for example, predictable in many ways—the seasons, the tides, the sun and the moon, the repetitive cycles of birth and death—yet within nature there are other factors that are unpredictable, constantly interweaving within and through the known, yet they are still part of what nature is all about. Storms and winds, earthquakes and volcanoes, are unpredictable. They can be expected at certain times and under certain conditions, but they do not necessarily adhere to a timetable, nor can they be controlled.
Our lives too are like this, our days laid out for us, but within our daily lives come the harbingers of change, the sudden shifts that can knock us off our feet or propel us to spread our wings.
Easier to look outside of us… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
It’s easy to look outside of ourselves and see how the rest of the world is doing. It’s easy to see where others are just not getting it right. But our real challenge is to turn inward, to stop focusing on others and pay attention to what is happening in our own nature, in our inner world. In so doing, we become partners to change rather than opponents to the changing nature of things. We become like the wind and the clouds, more easily flowing with what life brings us. We become more consciously aware of the nature of our personal lives.
We begin to see that as we learn to flow with our lives, our lives flow more easily with us. We are not so shaken up by the events in our lives, whether in our personal lives or what is happening in the world, for we see the bigger natural picture, the constantly changing picture. If this happens, then that happens, then something else will come as well, in an ever-unfolding series of events that help us to grow and understand life in ways we had never imagined we could or should.
My inner nature has been pushing me to more firmly ground myself in my spiritual practice, to keep taking it to new levels, going deeper and higher. At times I am more successful than at other times, but what I do notice is that every time I go into my sanctum, my space where I do yoga and meditation, it is easier and easier to tune out the world and tune into my inner world. My persistence is paying off.
Physically there is less resistance, and mentally there is less intrusion. My mind knows what I am asking it to do, and it stands aside. It knows that this is sacred time and that there will still be plenty of time for it later. In fact, for most of the day I fully accept its presence. “At this moment, nothing is more important,” I tell myself. It’s been established: Nothing, at this moment, is more important than this practice.
As we all face the tension of now, of what is happening in our world, as others make decisions that we may not agree with, we must turn inward and ask ourselves where we too are doing the same things to ourselves. What decisions are we making that are just not that good for our well being? It’s not someone else’s problem either, it’s a problem that we all must deal with personally, on an individual level. If we all dealt with universal issues on a personal level perhaps they would no longer arise in the world outside of us—there would be no reason.
Inner practice leads to great change… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Your inner nature may be pushing you in its own unique way. The first step in beginning a spiritual practice it to begin listening to what is being said and to begin looking around at what you are being shown. The eyes and ears are a sure means of exploring just what is being asked or shown. Then a real dialogue can begin.
Your spirit will always find a way to connect. You just have to be open. Watch how nature unfolds in your daily life, in the storms and gentle breezes both, in the turmoil and the calm. Life is leading you, naturally, in waking and dreaming.
One day we must all take off and head into the great unknown… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
We must all take the hero’s journey. At some point in our lives it becomes imperative. When we stand on the threshold, about to take the first step into the unknown, we feel totally alone. No one has ever done what we are about to do. Our journey is our own to have, to experience, and to return from.
Perhaps our first journey is to leave our parents at the age of five and go off to school, to get on the school bus and return at the end of the day having had an experience that no one else has ever had. We must all do this at some point in our lives if we are to become mature, independent beings.
“Your real duty is to go away from the community to find your bliss,” writes Joseph Campbell. And it’s true, we all have to leave the known, the easy comforts of a provided life and experience the discomforts of life on our own.
There are many stages of the hero’s journey. There is that first stage of leaving home, of going off to college or moving far from where we grew up, to begin anew, as youth chomping at the bit for our own experiences beyond the world of our parents. Many never take another hero’s journey after that. We settle into our lives, become complacent, disillusioned, perhaps angry at the world for not meeting us in the way we expected. Our spirit, however, never gives up. It comes knocking, constantly asking us to please get up and do something to change ourselves!
Sometimes the call of the spirit is finally answered later in life. The journey is taken up again, when other duties have been met, when our maturity allows us to shed some of what has held us back in the past, when we are finally ready. Others continue the hero’s journey unabated, letting something else besides the dictates of society and family tradition guide them on their way, those free-spirited ones who never seem to settle in one place for very long. Others constantly refuse the call, even late into life; even upon their death beds they do not heed the proddings of their spirit to experience the bliss of life.
There is another journey… to the Deeper Within… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Besides the hero’s journey in the world, there is another kind of hero’s journey, the inner journey, the call of the spirit to encounter and experience the Deeper Within, as I like to call it. The journey into the Deeper Within is as frightening as taking that first step on the young hero’s journey, when leaving home for the first time and finding out what it means to be a fully responsible adult.
The Deeper Within calls to us throughout our lives. Calling and calling, it asks us to come closer, to hear what it has to tell us of the treasures and mysteries of the deeper self, like a deep well, the bottom of which is endless. The Deeper Within is where our true bliss lies, where our real transformation awaits. Once we heed this call, we are offered the opportunity to go on a journey that never ends.
To be ready to encounter and experience this Deeper Within we must allow ourselves to take the first part of the hero’s journey in the real world. We must leave home, grow up, create a life for ourselves on our own terms, as fully independent beings. We must gather experiences, learn what it means to face our fears and test our merits, to have gains and losses, to have love and to lose love, to build our egos and strengthen our spirits in a world that is often ignorant, disharmonious, and could care less.
Once we have had experiences in the real world, we might be ready to have experiences in the Deeper Within, where everything that we have learned from being in the outer world will be utilized and tested, proven to be useful or useless in our inner world. In the Deeper Within we will finally meet our spirit face to face, all that it encompasses, our light side and our dark side. We must be prepared for such encounters.
Our ego, strengthened by our life experiences, will prove its worth, showing us what we are really made of as we dive into the Deeper Within. The shamanic process of recapitulation is taking the hero’s journey into the Deeper Within. It entails facing what has controlled us and what has guided us, what has supplied us with our energy and what has drained us of our energy. Recapitulation is the hero’s journey to reconnecting with the spirit self. During recapitulation we surrender our ego to this spirit self, so that it may guide us to full transformation.
As we return to the real world from our hero’s journey through the Deeper Within, we must ease slowly back into society, quietly and humbly take our place again, transformed yet fully present. We return to life like a newborn, full of a new kind of knowledge that others cannot totally grasp. We return from taking the journey into the Deeper Within speaking a strange new language, having had visions and mystical encounters. We return with a new way of perceiving the world, with a new kind of awareness.
Complexities of the deeper self blissfully revealed upon taking the hero’s journey… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Everything is now so clear to us, life explained on so many levels, death faced and found to be nothing more than this life extended, experienced in another state. We return with a new kind of sober fearlessness, with a new kind of detachment, and yet we feel and experience life with far greater love and compassion than previously possible. We emerge fully aware of our universal interconnectedness and our energetic connection to all living beings. Yes, we return with blissfulness coursing through us, having experienced bliss, having fully known what bliss really is.
Our new self wants everyone else to experience the bliss of life in this manner, to take the hero’s journey to the Deeper Within and transform too! But we learn soon enough that not everyone is ready. “I can’t read all that spiritual crap!” someone said to me the other day. I was not offended, nor did I feel sorry for the person. I simply acknowledged the journey that was being taken.
There are millions of kinds of journeys being taken simultaneously. Some people are here, others there. But the thing to remember is that we all had to start somewhere. We all had to take that first step into the unknown at some point, whether in a past life or in this life. At one time we all had to, and have to, take the first step on the hero’s journey to the Deeper Within too.
Wishing you all well, wherever you are on your hero’s journey. Keep going!
Jan
Eventually, as you take your path of heart, it will all become clear… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
We must all take our own journeys. We must let others in our lives take their own journeys as well. Yet we must all accept the guidance that comes to us, just as we must all responsibly share the guidance that we have to offer.
There is a fine line between being a teacher and being a student. In the beginning we do need guidance, but our far greater work lies within, in the context of our inner world, where only we can go. And so a teacher may be necessary as we begin our inward journey, as we seek our own path. Eventually our teacher will let us go, because we will let the teacher know that we are ready, and the teacher will not hold onto us, for a good teacher knows when the student is ready.
Seek always your own path, even when you are a student. Don’t forget to look around you as you go through life, searching always for the next sign showing you your new direction. Every day life points you in a new direction—each day—aiding you to find not only your anchoring soul within, but the flame of your transcendent soul as well. This is what you seek, access to both your grounded self and your free self. They must be brought together in some form of practice that will enable them both to harmoniously coexist, as well as continually advance.
Look outwardly but turn inwardly to find the signs that will lead to your greater connection with Self, with your wholeness, with your calm inner knowing self.
Do not be afraid to be different. Do not be afraid to latch onto that ray of light which resonates so deeply with your heart. It is only by taking that path of heart—different though it may be from the paths that those around you are taking—that you will find your true self.
Your path of heart is the only one for you. Once you are on it, you will know it. Then, become a good teacher by your example, by your practice of taking that path of heart every day of your life through task and turmoil, through joy and disdain, through beauty and destruction. If it is truly your path of heart then it is right, and everything you encounter on that path is right too.
I dream a universal dream. I hear these words clearly spoken: “The truth is but a tiny seed.” And then I see a seed, a speck, a flash of insight. Then black clouds and white clouds roll in, covering the seed. I know they are the dark clouds of fear and the white clouds of illusion, covering what we don’t want to know, what we will not face. I understand that this is what we do with our deepest truths—we hide them from ourselves. They are still there, however, tiny seeds waiting to be discovered.
I lie awake in the night and know that I must always dare myself to part the clouds and find the meaning of the seeds. I must not let the seeds of truth lie there untended, never properly nurtured. If I don’t tend to them they will grow moldy and create problems.
Contemplation of this dream leads me back along a winding road, to a spark of a memory that emerges, grows, and is nurtured as I face the truth of it.
I was living in New York City in 1984, working for a publishing company. It was the height of the AIDS crisis. An office meeting was called because a man among us had AIDS, in fact was dying. I will call him David. David was about 50, a man of energy and vitality, an actor and singer, so sweet and kind, so gentle and considerate. He kept a jar of chocolates on his desk. He’d invite anyone in to sit, have a chocolate, and shoot the breeze. His health had been steadily deteriorating. In the few years that I knew him, I watched him go from healthy physique to skeletal sickness. He worked until he could no longer do so. The day that the meeting was called he was still coming into the office on occasion, though on that day he was not there.
The meeting was a real eye-opener for me. When asked to be open and honest, assured that no one was taking notes, people revealed themselves. People I had thought kind and compassionate showed that they were judgmental, bigoted and homophobic, hate-filled and fearful. There was a guy I had a slight romantic interest in. When he spoke at this meeting, a very intelligent guy, I lost all interest in him. I was, in fact, floored by the ignorance I heard. Was I being judgmental myself? Probably, but that’s where I was at the time. I could not believe that others did not share the same love that I felt for this deeply suffering fellow human being. On that day, however, I also saw what was kept so carefully guarded at all of our cores, the fearful seed of truth that we will all face death one day.
David got sicker and sicker. About two weeks before he died a friend came into my office and asked me, as an illustrator, if I would make a card for him that everyone could sign. I accepted the assignment with a heavy heart, knowing how important it would be.
A happy llama… – Drawing by Jan Ketchel
I knew that David loved llamas—the furry animal kind—that he’d had some transformative experience with them while traveling, and so I knew I had to incorporate them into the card. I faced also that he was dying, that he was leaving this world, and so I didn’t want to paint a ‘let’s pretend you’re NOT dying’ picture.
I sat at my drawing board for a long time and then I let the illustration come through me. I channeled it. It flowed out of my pens and brushes, a four-part comic strip story. Winged angel llamas grazed peacefully in a bucolic setting. A new winged angel llama flew up to be with them and was lovingly welcomed amongst them. Contented and at peace, he too grazed and frolicked happily, finally at home among the llama angels. When I was done I sat back and looked at the card. It was beautiful and sensitive, but it frightened me. I’d written something inside too, about his friends waiting to greet him again, or something like that.
I stared at what I had created for a long time, left it sitting, came back to it over and over again, finally decided that it was just right. It had to be right, for David; deeply respectful of this man who was facing an early death with such graciousness, his sense of humor intact throughout his illness, his thankfulness for having had such a good life. It had to be the right, meaningful, personal, sendoff.
I brought it to work and handed it over to my friend, a little fearful that she might think it was too much, that I had gone too far, for I had a sense that it was a little daring, confronting the fact of death, even in this gentle way. “This is great!” she said. “Oh my God, he’ll love it.” It went around the office and everyone signed it, everyone loved it, except one person.
Normally a pussycat, and someone I knew as a friend, stormed into my office. “How dare you!” he fumed, a big man, barely able to keep his voice down. “He’s dying! You can’t send a card like that to a dying man! You can’t put llamas on his card! He loves llamas! I won’t sign it!”
Sometimes we cannot control what lies in our darkness… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
My retort was just as angry as his, though I did not hold back. I didn’t care that anyone else heard me either. I stood up from my chair, looked up into his red face towering above me, and yelled at him. I told him that he didn’t have to sign the card, that I felt the card was totally appropriate and that the llamas were there for a very good reason, exactly because David had such a spiritual connection with them. And in the frightened face of that big man, I knew I was facing my own fear of death, what he himself could not face in his friend. His fear was real, and yet I would not back down or even sympathize.
He stomped out of my office in an angry huff and didn’t speak to me for a long time. He stared daggers at me every time I passed his desk. He stepped away from me on the subway train that we both rode. In turn, I had to face why I got so angry when he confronted me. Why did I usually get angry like that when confronted by something, especially something that I knew to be true? Why did I always run from the truth? I could have been more diplomatic: “Well, I felt the same way at first, but that’s just what came to me, and it felt right, but of course you don’t have to sign it if it doesn’t feel right,” was what I should have said, but I knew there was more to it. I had to face, not only that I was really just as scared of death as he was, but that for some unknown reason I had vitriolic anger boiling inside me. How easily it slipped out!
Eventually, I approached the big man and apologized for screaming at him. By this time word had gotten around that David did indeed love the card. He sent back word, thanking me, telling me that he kept it near him, looked at it often, laughed and felt so happy every time he looked at it. It was in his arms when he died. I’d also heard that it ended up incorporated into an AIDS quilt, on a section commemorating David.
I know now that no matter where we are in our lives, our inner world is interwoven in our everyday world. The seeds of our truths lie at our core, festering and asking to be reckoned with, consciously on occasion, but, more often than not, unconsciously. Even those who live lives greatly disconnected from their inner world, who have no sense of its existence, are dominated by it in a myriad of ways: in anger, depression, jealousy, pain; in acting out; in feelings of worthlessness, inflation, hopelessness; in fear.
Our inner world dominates us until we finally clear away the black clouds of darkness and the white clouds of illusion and reveal the seeds of truth at our core for what they truly are and what they truly mean. And then we are offered the chance of gaining some equilibrium, for otherwise we are sorely off balance.
Finally, I have learned that signs and synchronicities constantly come to point us inwardly, yet they are often missed, dismissed, or too frightening to bear. But it is only in the bearing of the tension of them that we discover just where we need to go and just what we need to face. In facing our deepest issues, those signs and synchronicities take on magical significance, their messages offering direct experience of life on a totally new level, out of the ordinary and into the extraordinary.
