Tag Archives: inner work

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: What is Fear?

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Dear Readers,

I thought this portion of a message that I received from Jeanne today might be interesting and perhaps helpful as you do your inner work. She says the following:

As fears pop up to challenge you, take a look at them and know that they are just that, fears, and nothing more. And what is fear but an old habit of emotional baggage. But if you look into that bag you will see that it is empty because fear is invisible! It does not exist unless you attach to it and make it be important. The process of letting go is taking away the importance of that which has conjured itself before you. These can be many things that, in reality, do not exist unless you attach meaning and significance to them.

She went on to say that by letting go of fears and detaching from the conjuring mind, you free your energy to understand why you had the fears to begin with, and that the mind itself cannot fully achieve clarity because its habit is to focus on what it has conjured. She says:

As you learn to detach, to really let go of the conjuring mind, you will discover what has always been present in your life and in your self and in your destiny. But such clarity only truly comes when you are ready for it.

More from us tomorrow!
– Jan and Jeanne

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Everything will be all right!

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I found this quote from Jeanne among my papers, from February 2004. I think it goes very nicely with today’s message of being kind to the self:

Stop trying to figure everything out. You know what you need to do. Face the fear and expel it by allowing for things to happen. Allow the magic to happen. It is all around you. Be open to it. Listen and you will hear it. Be quiet and still and you will feel it. Go deeper and you will find the answers. Everything you need is inside you.

At the time, Jeanne was encouraging me to trust my experiences of inner work, to keep going deeper, to trust the messages I got, that they were leading me where I needed to go. The words still ring true. The journey never stops, we just get to new levels if we dare ourselves to go beyond our limitations, if we keep moving. The same truths and guidance that I paid attention to six years ago still work now, in fact they will always work. The challenge is to remember our experiences so we can dare ourselves to keep having more of them, without fear. As Jeanne always said to me in my darkest moments: Don’t worry, Jan, everything will be fine, everything will be all right.

Don’t worry, Dear Readers, everything will be fine, everything will be all right!
Love,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

#648 The Voice of Kindness

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Jeanne Marie Ketchel
Channeled by Jan Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
I am going to ask you again to give us one word of advice, a third word of guidance as we do our inner work. What is the next thing of most importance for us to consider?

Be KIND to the self as you do your inner work. It is appropriate when doing inner work to take it seriously, to push the self to go beyond your limitations, and to ask the self to be strong and persistent, but it is also imperative that you treat the self with kindness.

In offering kindness to the self you allow for something else to begin to grow within, and that something is love. Love is your ultimate goal: love of self, of your environment, of your life, and of all that it encompasses. Begin learning about true love with conscious measures of kindness, directed at the self.

Your usual critical voices underlying or overriding your thoughts, desires, and attempts at change must be silenced, pushed aside and overridden by another voice underlying those old favorites, those old voices that you know so well. Call this underlying voice “the voice of kindness” and ask it to whisper its words of encouragement and praise, of note and worthiness, of love and compassion to you, My Dear Ones. Allow it to speak of you, for you, and about you in the terms that you desire from another. Allow the voice of kindness to gently and softly whisper in your ear its heart-centered words of wisdom and truth, of knowing and hope. It does not intend you harm but only to tell you some long -buried secrets of the self that you have not dared to accept or even entertain.

The voice of kindness within is your most central balancing voice, the one that can pull you out of your deepest despair, your loneliest moments, and your most desperate hours. It is the voice of connection to all things, to Self, to God, to Universal Love, to all things, no matter what you choose to call your greater universe.

You must find this voice of kindness within the self or you will not grow. You must listen to what it says or you will not change. You must trust it or you will not evolve. You must allow it to speak clearly and lovingly or you will not gain the perfect balance that you so desire.

Ground your self next in this inner voice of kindness. Its tone may be loud and brassy, calling to you quite clearly. Its tone may be soft and whispery, or it may be mumbling and sleepy, as yet not quite awake. It may be so far distant that it is but an echo on the breeze or a murmur of something that you recognize but can’t quite place. It may be nearby or far away, within reach or difficult to access, but either way you must find this voice within in order to truly change.

This is my advice for today: Know that the voice of kindness exists inside you and intend now to allow it to be part of your life. Invite it to participate. Ask it to speak to you, even as you ask me and your other guides to speak. It knows us well. It will answer. You just have to listen for its special approach, its personally significant characteristics that belong to you alone, though it speaks the universal language of love: all compassionate, interconnected and energetically bound.

Messages from Jeanne

#647 Perseverance

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Jeanne Marie Ketchel
Channeled by Jan Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Once again, I am asking you to give us one important word to guide us through the next two days as we enter a new work week, a new month, and new energy. What word of advice and guidance do you suggest?

My Dear Ones, I have already instituted the idea of patience and that must remain your overall secret weapon as you do your inner work, reside in the world and seek evolution, spiritual and otherwise. It must be your ready weapon of choice, no matter what you encounter or what accosts you. The next word of advice, and also a most necessary component of personal and evolutionary growth, is: PERSEVERANCE. Without perseverance, no matter what presents itself, you will eventually find your self sitting patiently by the wayside. But to what end?

To persevere means to continually pick your self up, dust or dry your self off, pick up your heavy feet and take another step. Perseverance encompasses turning your eyes always forward to the light at the end of the tunnel, to the horizon, or to the inner sense of knowing that you are on the right track. Perseverance, in tandem with patience, will afford you the steady calmness that you crave in order to take a journey that is always anchored, though you may not always see clearly or feel that you are gaining ground. These two important aspects of growth-oriented individuals and seekers, of pursuers of truth and goodness, will remain constant once you invite them to travel with you on your personal journey.

In perseverance will you find strength. In perseverance will you find fuel. Even if it is only enough to take one step forward, so will it be enough for one day. Patience and perseverance, one on either side of you as they take your arms in theirs, will give you what you need for the inner journey and the outer journey alike. Trusty and steady companions, with the forces of nature imbued in them, they will reconnect you with your own forces of nature. For you will recognize this natural energy inside you once they trigger its awakening, and then you will flow calmly and steadily once again.

Patiently persevere in your inner work, in your outer work, and in your pursuit of all that is offered as you live your life upon that earth, tapping into the greater interconnected energy of all things, one step at a time. Don’t give up; keep going!

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Dreaming with Jung

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Speaking of dreams, as Jeanne does in her message today, I had a second dream encounter with C. G. Jung. Once again we were sitting opposite each other with the enormous gray boulder hovering between us, about five feet tall and oval in shape, that I wrote about in my blog the other day. I have been puzzling over the meaning of the boulder, in waking and dreaming life, since I first dreamed about it and I have a pretty good idea of what it might mean.

In this second dream, I am asking Jung if I got it right: “Have I figured out the meaning of the boulder?” He suggests that, yes, it might mean that, or it might mean something else, it could mean many things. He repeats what he said in the first dream: “It may not be what it appears to be!” He does not give me a straight answer and I am slightly frustrated, but curious at the same time.

“Look again,” he suggests, and as I peer closely at the boulder it turns into a gray balloon, equally as huge and imposing as the boulder. I instinctively know that it is filled with liquid emotion. “I get it!” I say, but then the balloon turns into a gigantic papier-mache pinata and I instinctively know that it is filled with trinkets of meaning, symbolizing many things in my life, past, present, and future.

“You see,” Jung says, “it can be anything that you need. Each day it may be something different, depending on what you need.” And again he suggests: “Look closely. What is it?”

At this point I wake up and I understand that the boulder is indeed no different than the mirrors, reflecting exactly what I need, and that, yes, as Jeanne suggests in today’s message, patience is a most necessary component of inner work, taking each dream, each day, as it comes, with whatever it offers.

Have a great weekend! Look for Chuck’s blog tomorrow. I am sure he will offer something interesting to add to our dreams.
Jan