Tag Archives: inner work

A Day in a Life: What Is Suffering & Why Is It So Necessary?

November 16, 2011 Jan Leave a comment

Today, I follow up on last week’s blog, Wounded Children. I ask the question: What is suffering? And why is it so necessary?

I grew up in the Catholic religion. I went to Catholic schools and learned that Jesus wanted us to be innocent children, to be free of sin, yet the world itself did not support me in my endeavors. The world was full of sin and yes, suffering. I suffered as a child, as most children do. As much as I tried to live a sin-free life, there was no getting around sin, it was everywhere. I realized that everything, even breathing could be considered sinful.

In my weekly forays to the confessional, as often as I tried to articulate my sins, I found no actual release from them. Any absolution was momentary at best, because as soon as I walked out of the church I was back in sin-ville. As a child, suffering meant not only trying to find ways to deal with what happened to me out in the world, but, on a deeper level, it meant dealing with the fact that I would never be holy enough. I was a sinner and so I must suffer.

My child’s perspective was not all that far from the Buddhist perspective, which accepts that the reality we live in, samsara, is indeed an ocean of suffering. Samsara is an endless cycle of obsession and illusion, the more we try to escape it, the more it assaults us. Until, that is, we turn to it and ask: What is life trying to teach me? Why is it so necessary to suffer?

The Shamans of Carlos Castaneda’s lineage tell us too that this world is an illusion and that we are born to struggle with breaking through that illusion. They tell us that the world constantly assaults us in an effort to wake us up to this fact by presenting us with things that we want to push away and other things that we want to constantly cling to in our efforts to uphold that illusion. But in the end the Shamans contend, as do the Buddhists, that we must face the illusionary reality of the world and break it down, one illusion at a time. By challenging our perceptions, by challenging the way we think and act, and by challenging ourselves to face our deaths as new life, we offer ourselves the opportunity to break through the endless suffering of being human.

If we believe that all lives are meaningful, that our personal suffering and the suffering of everyone else in the world is important, then perhaps we might understand the necessity of it. Samsara, illusion, is endless. We are all being confronted with the truth of this as the revelations of sexual abuse swirl through the media, assaulting our personal illusions, coming into our homes on the nightly news. Our illusions are being shattered.

From a Buddhist and Shamanic perspective, this is very good. Such shatterings offer us the opportunity to view the world differently, to accept the necessity of suffering as a means of breaking us out of endless samsara. In my book, The Man in the Woods, I present the sufferings of my child self. It’s often hard for people to fathom that I suffered such abuse and yet survived the experiences. But I know that my own experiences are not all that exceptional. I hear stories of equal or worse horror every day, of abuse that went on for just as many years or even longer.

I am both humbled and hopeful as I hear the stories being told to me personally or by the media. And yet I know that, as people face their personal suffering, they are facing the shattering of their lives. But I also know that this shattering is the necessary breakthrough point to new life.

The universe itself is challenging us to face the reality of samsara and the necessity for it now. As a catalyst to shattering our illusions, constant exposure to the horrific reality of sexual abuse against innocent children is a mighty force. This exposure alone has the ability to change our world as we discover what has been kept hidden for decades, but even more deeply meaningful as we face our personal secrets.

When we are finally ready to face our personal suffering, we are ready to shatter the illusions that we have constructed in an effort to both get us through our lives but also to protect us so we could survive. When we face our inner turmoil, the suffering and the illusion of it, we face the fact of the world as indeed samsara, endless suffering.

On the bright side, in facing our personal suffering, in shattering our illusions about who we are, we begin to see the world differently. Suffering becomes understood as the means to enlightenment as the Buddhists present it and the means to accessing the warrior self as the Shamans suggest. In recapitulation, in deep inner work, in allowing ourselves to sit through the horror of the news, facing the truth of human suffering, we offer ourselves a new opportunity to evolve beyond this world of endless suffering.

Both the Buddhists and the Shamans use suffering and death as the greatest teachers and advisors. Both the Buddhists and the Shamans are aware of death at all times, preparing for it, using the challenges in this world to break through to a new awareness that we are all beings seeking enlightenment.

The reason we must suffer is the same for all of us. We are being challenged to grasp the truth of suffering as our greatest teacher, so that we may crack through it and make our deaths as meaningful as we want our lives to be.

In samsara we prepare for new life; in suffering we discover what that might mean. With each new life we are offered the opportunity to discover the illusions we steep ourselves in, that are presented to us in myriad ways by the world outside of us and by our inner reactions, disturbances, and challenges to that world. We are all here to live deeply meaningful lives—that I have no doubt about.

As I look around at the world each day and discover yet another reason to be disappointed in my fellow humans, to be distraught, disturbed and disgusted, I know I am being challenged to not turn off the television set. I am being challenged to face samsara and to ask others to face it as well. It is only through facing the onslaughts of horror that we can change the world.

We must face our inner darkness—mirrored unrelentingly, it seems lately, by the outside world—and ask everyone else to do the same. Suffering leads to enlightenment. I keep that in mind.

Thanks for reading. Love to you all,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

Readers of Infinity: Be Proactively Self-reflective

November 14, 2011 Jan Leave a comment

Dear Infinity,

The I Ching tells me that it is time for incremental steps to change, that nature has a way of clearing things out and that the human being too, in small steps in the right direction, will eventually arrive in an evolved place. I read that the stars and planets ask us too to take small steps this week; to remain aware and pay attention to each moment and what we are doing, to be clearly aware that everything matters. What guidance do you offer us, Infinity, as we go into a new week?

Infinity answers with the following guidance:

It is logical to want to correct, protest, or confront that which is wrong, unjust, or disappointing outside of one’s self, but, truth be told, it is only in inner work that true change will happen. Change will not come to the greater world in the right alignment with truth until all people upon the earth bravely face their own truths, their own fears, their own disappointments, and the meaning of their personal anger and discontent.

True change, however, rides upon the winds each day. Opportunities abound to notice and act on behalf of the self and thus on behalf of all humanity, and the natural world as well.

A perfect world may not be possible you think? Perhaps it is a pipe dream? There are too many choices, opportunities, and forces to make it possible?

Do not fall into despair, Dear Readers. Grasp instead at the utter necessity of each one of you to resolve the issues of the self, to free your personal energy to explore the far greater meaning of life beyond the self, not as ego in the world, but as spirit energy in the world.

The grittiness of life pushes for change. Take personal steps each day to confront the self as to reason and purpose, as to why and wherefore, as to thought and action. Be proactively self-reflective. On a very deep level find out what matters most to the personal self and then ask why. Go deeper now into the self than ever before and question that which you have settled upon as truth, as identifiable self.

Can you go even deeper? Can you disassemble your set ideas of self until you are nothing but energy, with no attachments or issues? Can you dare to be nothing of importance? To self or others?

That is what all of your small steps of change are leading to. Disassembling the self in tiny increments, facing evil, disgust, negativity, fear and turmoil in the darkness of the self will provide a greater understanding of how others react in the world outside of you.

You are all the same. Face this fact and you will face the truth of life: You are all the same. And in the end you are all nothing but energy.

Thank you Infinity!

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Wounded Children

November 9, 2011 Jan Leave a comment

I believe we are all born wounded.

Art and Photo by Jan — Find the wounded child within

Some of us are born with physical wounds, readily apparent. Some of us are born with deep psychological wounds. Some of us are born into wounding circumstances. Some of us encounter wounding situations at young ages and some of us do not encounter them until much later. Some of us don’t know we are wounded at all. But, overall, if we are born into human existence we carry wounds that we are challenged to heal.

If we are ready to evolve into beings of higher consciousness and spiritual enlightenment our first challenge is to discover what our wounds are, to acknowledge and accept them. Our next challenge is to do everything we can to face them, to work on ourselves and the situations we find ourselves in so that we can heal and grow.

If you believe, as I do, that we choose the life we are in, then it stands to reason that we also choose the wounds and the work it takes to deal with them. I was born to distant, unemotional parents who lived out their own wounds their entire lives. My siblings and I were forced to grow up under the dominating force of those wounded child parents who were deeply cut off from feelings, with the inability to express love. If you have read my book, you know that shortly after the age of two I entered the world of a sexual predator. To what end, you might ask, did I choose that life? What is the purpose of my life?

I have discovered that in acknowledging and freeing my wounded child self, I have freed myself of a burden that I carried through many lives, that of the sexually abused child. In recapitulating, I have freed myself of my wounded parents as well, and I have freed my own children of bearing this wounding into another generation. Of course they chose me as a parent so they will have their own issues to contend with as they take their journeys, but I feel confident that I am no longer burdening them with my own personal issues by hiding them from myself.

As we ponder our wounded child self we are faced with many possibilities. Is our wounded child self known? Does it dominate us? Is it a big baby, like the 1% demanding everything of us, stealing our energy? Or is it like the 99% begging for a place in our lives, asked to be fairly treated and accepted? Is it angrily pushed away, decidedly evil? Or is it tenderly acknowledged as an integral part of our journey?

We are further challenged to become the proper adult figure in the lives of our wounded child selves. We must treat them fairly, without judgment, but with compassion and a firm approach. We must become a parent, loving and accepting, yet release the wounded child from its captive role, allowing it to take its own rightful place. We must thank our child self for bearing the wounds that are our evolutionary task, and we must find the means of integration, so that we may become wholly adult, all aspects of self in symbiotic balance, kept well-attended and nurtured, yet fully known.

If we are ready to release ourselves from our own traumas and face new possibilities for life we are more compassionate and appreciative of the challenges that others must face as well. We find that we are detached in a new way, having discovered that, as we recapitulate and face our personal challenges, we energetically free so many others. In freeing myself from my past I not only free my children, but I remove my negative, depressed energy from the world as well.

I believe my purpose in life is the same purpose as all other humans: to become as spiritually evolved as possible by knowing myself in the deepest way, freeing myself from repeating many more miserable lifetimes with the same wounds festering. In facing my wounded self I faced eons of wounded selves.

I understand now what it means to be deeply wounded and to really heal. Healing is what life is all about, finding the means to heal so that the world around us can heal as well. In our present lifetime it may be difficult to assess just what healing the world will look like, for it presently looks quite dire out there. With so many issues arising and coming to a head, the festering wounds of humanity now pose perhaps the greatest danger ever.

Triage is called for on a mass scale, but I still believe that each one of us must do personal triage first. We must go innerly and face the wounded self, healing the wounded child within so we can be fully present as integrated adults. In so doing we may just discover that what the world needs now is not really that much. We may discover that we don’t really need this world to be the same anymore, in fact we don’t want it to be the same because, as we recapitulate, we discover that what we once found so comforting is sorely lacking in comfort. We discover that our earthy needs are really very simple.

We really just need the world as our mirror, to keep us focused on changing our outlook on ourselves and others, to keep us focused on turning inward. We need the world to reflect back to us the real reason for being born into the life we are born into.

Find out why you are born so wounded and then find the means to heal. First heal the self and then heal the world by staying deeply, introspectively connected to a healing journey of constant course correction. By living a life of deep inner reflection, intent on healing, we take full responsibility for our wounded child self and we shift our energetic configuration from one of deep sadness, regret, and woundedness to one of power, grace, and freedom. Such inner work will change all of us: our selves, our families, our communities, our world.

In the Readers of Infinity blog on Monday I noted that Jeanne once again gave the same message: Learn to listen. I am struck by how often she speaks of training ourselves to pay attention to what is going on inside us. Listening is the key to doing inner work, to finding the reasons as well as the answers. In learning to listen to our wounded inner child we must be a good listener, but we must also be a good guide.

In recapitulating, or doing any kind of deep inner work, our adult self must be alert and aware, able to flow with what comes without judgment, fear, control, disgust, or dismissal. Each time we face our wounded child we must go deeper, beyond what we think, to what we feel and truly know is right. It is a process of constant readjustment, of learning to view ourselves and the world in a different way. We must all begin to envision ourselves as evolving spiritual beings, rather than human beings stuck in endless personal misery.

I challenge everyone to approach the wounded child self with compassion and love, listening to what the issues are and what the proper approach to resolving those issues might be. The answers for how to do this are available, but we must each decide that it is the journey we want to finally take. We must decide that in this lifetime we are choosing to free our wounded self to evolve in a new manner, both immediately now and in the lifetime to come.

Love to you all as you do your inner work,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

Readers of Infinity: The Spirit’s Call

October 10, 2011 Jan Leave a comment

Find solace in quietude today, for it is only in inner calmness that the deeper self may be realized. There is need for such inner seeking of self and not only now during the times in which you live. This is a truth for all times. It is only through experiences of the deeper self, the spiritual self, that humanity will realize the eternal connection that all human beings possess, not as a gift, but as a reality of being human.

In moments of quietude seek the deeper self, the universal self, and ask for guidance of this deeper universal self, which is the source of all knowledge.

Your guidance will come from within the self, though your outer reality will signal your way. Your direction in life and the necessary steps to discover the deeper meaning of your life will be in alignment with your outer reality.

Perhaps your outer reality signals a direction that will lead you to a new level of awareness or perhaps your outer reality signals that it is time to take a new direction. Your outer reality will approve or disapprove of steps you are considering. You will be offered choices that may or may not be right. How do you choose? How do you know what to do next? How do you know if one step will lead to growth or to disaster?

Inner quietude will bring the answers you seek. The trick is to know just what such inner quietude feels like for you. Seeking inner quietude as often as possible will train your awareness to know what to do. Eventually, you will feel this inner resonance immediately arising upon questioning. In inner calmness you will learn that all the answers lie waiting within.

Often the answer may be accompanied by discomfort because it will, of course, be challenging you to change, to choose something out of the ordinary, to perhaps greatly disrupt the life you have been leading, daring you to face a new direction. Discomfort-in-resonance is perhaps the most challenging inner place to be.

Be aware that such moments are evolutionary ones, the moments when you are fully aware that you must change, that you are being challenged to go beyond the present self. They can be frightening moments, but if you stay firmly attached to the resonance of the moment—the clear voice of your spirit calling—you will find the strength and guidance you need.

Training the self to listen and act on your spirit’s call to change will lead to greater awareness of your spirit’s ways and means of guiding you and you will also have learned a new step in acquiescing to your journey.

Pay attention to your spirit calling you. The call today may be for you alone, a call to grow, but in the future it may lead to the growth of others as well. As we all evolve upon this earth, as we all listen to the truth of the spirit’s call, a greater sense of ourselves as interconnected beings, all desiring the same things in life and in spirit, may arise as a new reality of being human. This is already a known truth: that we are all just struggling to become more than we are; that, in reality, we are all on the same journey, but as humans we become so wrapped up in our personal woes that we forget that we all suffer.

Do not forget that each one of us is on a similar journey, the point of which is to grow in awareness of why we are here. And that is why inner quietude is such an important tool in both our spiritual practices as well as in our lives in the world. Through inner quietude the two worlds may merge and we may begin to flow through our lives more seamlessly each day.

Find inner quietude, heeding the spirit’s call, as often as possible. Find the calm self and the calm mind and let the knowing mind of this state of being human guide you. We are all readers of infinity and our training is in our own lives, in the circumstances that make up our realities and the choices we make.

May you find quietude and make a decision based on your spirit’s call today. Even if it is only a small or seemingly insignificant shift in self-awareness, such a step may offer more than you can imagine. It may release you from the place you now find yourself so caught in. Change the inner self and find how easily the outer self grasps at the opportunity for a new and different life as well. If we are hungry for anything, truly that thing is change.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Shedding

October 5, 2011 Jan 1 Comment

What needs to happen today for me to become more of me? To me, life is all about shedding: shedding roles, shedding skins, cloaks, crusts, and predicaments to reach the true essence of self. Think of a fruit surrounded by a tough skin, a bitter skin, a sour skin. If we did not remove the skin we would not be able to enjoy the delectable sweetness of the fruit within. Shedding the skin and figuring out who we truly are takes work. In my case it took a full and deep shamanic recapitulation into my very soul, into the darkest self where I met my enemy and went to battle against what had been living inside me my entire life. The process was one of shedding the fearful enemies that hid so well inside. No one but I really knew of their existence, no one but I dealt with them daily, no one but I kept them imprisoned inside me.

I continue my shedding process every day as I ask myself: What can I shed today?

Last week a very subtle inner shift allowed me the freedom to become a little more of the me that I have been allowing to emerge and live. This is autumn, a time of great shedding and most meaningful change and transition. Synchronistically, in the news, Amanda Knox, a young American woman convicted of killing her roommate in Perugia, Italy four years ago, was released from prison. After a long and difficult period of truth-seeking a simple reversal of the decision made four years ago—guilty or not guilty—sent her back home to Seattle, a free woman. Though that decision was deeply meaningful and simultaneously controversial, when it came down to the verdict it was one spoken word that set her free. I see this case as a metaphor for our times, underscoring the need to make decisions that allow for drastic change. These times ask us all to question deeply, ourselves and our world, to find out the truth and to act on it. I have no idea what her truth really is, no one will ever know except Amanda Knox herself perhaps, but we can all learn from her story.

The other day, someone, in a rather accusatory tone, questioned me: “Why are you so fabulously happy all the time?”

“Well,” I said, “I’m done with despair and besides, I spend most of my time with one foot in this world and the other in the ecstatic, why wouldn’t I be happy?” It was all too much for my questioner to fathom.

I didn’t just wake up one day and find myself straddling these two worlds; not at all, I had to go through the deepest, darkest despair to arrive at this place of light and balance. But it was always my choice to take the journey that led to this place, in a gradual yet intentional process of shedding the old self.

So that brings me back to my declaration of independence from Jeanne as teacher and guide that I so boldly declared last week and have, since then, experienced in so many ways. I find that she taught me well. In finally taking her up on her insistence that I could do it on my own, as she so often urged me, I find that I have freed myself from yet one more self-imposed imprisonment. I freed myself from a role that in reality only I was attached to. And all it took was months of inner struggle!

We do tend to imprison ourselves: in labels and declarations, in our student-of-life roles, in our promises that we made a long time ago. It was only in shedding promise after promise that I was able to evolve into someone who is “so fabulously happy all the time.” Although those promises were made when they were extremely necessary, they now no longer serve who I truly am. I don’t mean to imply that I don’t get sad or depressed, but I’ve learned to face the truth with a different outlook now. I take in the broader truth, the long-term perspective that I am a being who is going to die, but also that my life is a never-ending journey. I now, constantly and consciously, focus on urging myself to take the next step, subtle or otherwise.

Who, indeed, can I become today? It may take only a tiny shift in perspective, in action, in thought or inner perception, but it may be a life-changing decision on my part, in the end capable of catapulting me further than I ever thought possible.

As we head into deeper autumn now, as we notice what is happening in the world around us, such as the case of Ms. Knox, can we ask ourselves the same questions that were asked about her? Do I deserve imprisonment for the rest of my life or do I deserve to be set free? What role do I want to play: that of the prisoner or that of the free spirit? The main question, however, is: Where do I imprison myself?

Most of us do keep ourselves shackled to old ideas of the self when, in fact, we’re actually being urged to change, to keep taking the journey of the evolving self.

Who will I become today? If I pay attention to the synchronicities and signs in my life, those that resonate both inside and outside, I may be able to let go of despair, shed an old skin and release the sweetness within, bursting with ripeness.

I face my own shedding process each day as I question myself and ask myself to shed my self-importance or my fear of my evolving spirit, as I once shed old feelings, during my recapitulation, of unworthiness that I did not deserve to walk upon this planet. I take another step each day upon this earth as I wander my path, asking to be guided, knowing that I do indeed deserve to live just this life upon just this planet.

Yes, I fully accept that I am a changing being and that I am a being who is going to die, but before that event I intend to fully live, “so fabulously happy,” as is my choice.

Wandering still,
Jan

Riverwalker Press