Here is the weekly message from Jeanne. Have a great week!
Like the last daisy struggling to survive, we too must struggle to change… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
These are tenuous, between times. Shifts will begin to happen soon, if they haven’t already. Old ways will begin to fall away as new ways begin to assert themselves more fully, as they achieve a more firmly planted place in your life.
Remain focused on progress. Remain attuned to your heart’s desires and your heart’s path, for that is the path of change. On your path of heart find your glory and your balance, your calmness and your gaiety. Your happiness will naturally arise from your certain steps forward, as you learn who you are and who you are meant to be.
Look to the self to fulfill your deepest needs. Bring steadiness and love into your life through deep communication with the self. Seek your inner world a little bit more each day. Find your way inward, especially as you traverse these between times, for it is now that your greatest progress will be made, even as you may also have to face your biggest challenges. But that’s the beauty of it all! Only in difficult times will Life really grab you and say, “Come on! There’s so much waiting for you to experience and explore. Let’s find out what it’s all about together, but first you must know yourself at the deepest level or I will not find you the true companion I know you to be and our experiences together will not be as fulfilling as they have the potential to be.”
“I wait for you,” Life says. “I’m waiting for you, but do your inner work first. You won’t really know anything until you know yourself at the deepest level.”
Yes, life asks you to do inner work too if you are to experience all that you are capable of, all that life offers, and all that the universe provides.
Remember, you are all part of a greater interconnected whole, but to experience that you must know yourself on the deepest level. Otherwise, the greater interconnected whole is meaningless. Without a foundation within the self there is nothing of meaning to build on, no meaningful structure for greater awareness to come from and rely upon.
Life awaits within. It waits to greet you there and take you on the journey of a lifetime—whenever you are ready!
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 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
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
Here is this week’s channeled message from Jeanne:
Our resident butterfly reminds us that no matter how battered we get by life we are still beautiful… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Proceed slowly and thoughtfully through life. Consider your options and the best method of approach to your problems, your issues, and to life in general as it greets you each day. How do you wish to be in the world? From your heart center will come your answers. Look there.
In all aspects of life seek balance, seek calm steadiness, even while you at times must take quick action and respond without time for forethought. As you more often act from a place of deep contemplation and soul searching, so will your times of stress and reaction be addressed from this place of kindness and compassion too.
As you exercise your balanced self, as you speak from your heart center, so will these aspects of self become more comfortable and more pronounced. Your personal make up will change as you exercise your inner self in your outer world.
In all beings is this possible, for all beings are as one. Do not discriminate or separate the self from others. For in true reality, as energetic life, you are all the same. Seek knowledge of what lies in your own heart and begin to see the world outside of you respond from this place of universal compassion as well. It’s how your energetic make up works!
Be kind to the self today, but be equally kind to others as well. This is how you will begin to exercise a more compassionate self and a more compassionate world.
Your life is vibrantly alive and flowing in the universal energy—if you dare yourself to experience it that way!
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.
