Tag Archives: inner work

Messages from Jeanne

#766 Body Language

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Written by Jan Ketchel with a channeled message from Jeanne Ketchel.

I ask Jeanne for guidance on this day, the birthday of America. Here is what she advises us:

It is time now to pay attention to the signs coming from the body self, for as much as you all look for signs of spirit and pay attention to that which comes from outside to guide you, your body is really your most important guide. Once you begin to pay more attention to it you will know this.

You may think you are already quite body oriented, but most of you have taken on the doctrines and rhetoric of others and, wise and truthful though they may be, only your own body knows what is best for it.

Turn from your outer knowing now and tune into your inner knowing. Simplify your body’s needs. Pare down what you put into it and discover in so doing just how little food it really needs to survive, how little beverage and sweets it really wants, for it runs better than any manmade machine on less fuel. On this most American day, when focus is outside of the self, I ask that you do a most un-American thing and go innerly, to quietude, rather than be the extraverted type today.

It is a time of abundance yet is that abundance of inner grace and calm if you look for its silent music within. Outer abundance may now rest and this will be good for all mankind, and the world at large, if this inner awareness is paid attention to.

Happy Spirit Tree! Notice her body language? See how she throws her arms up in openness to life!

The body self, which is the focus of this message today, needs and craves inner quiet, peace, and calm. It will speak volumes to you if you let it, but I realize this may be a scary prospect for many, for in so doing the body will confront you with its truths. These may range from long held secrets and mysteries to certain ideas and thoughts, to the truths of the spirit self that are quite fantastic and unbelievable when first encountered. But I ask that you suspend your judgments, your self-criticisms, your set ideas and self-imposed limitations, and listen without fear or despair to your body self. Allow it to be your guide a little more each day.

In allowing this process of body language, you will invariably discover that you will need very little else to guide you as you make your way through life. Your body is your world, containing all that sustains and creates life, and when in balance its qualities of healing and spirit contact are unparalleled. Your personal channels of communication within and without will be open and ready for daily use as you hone their qualities and recognize their features.

You are all abundant beings. Allow yourselves to accept your abilities. You are all special in this regard, as this woman who channels me, yet is she nothing special, as she well knows. She continues to confront her issues and hone her skills just as she wishes all to do. In acceptance of the abilities available to all, she knows the possibilities are endless. But, first and foremost, she knows that one must lose the ego’s trappings, which include fears and inflations, personal attachments and desires, as well as self-judgments and self-criticisms. She knows that one must be daring to not hold back the spirit self that is trapped within the body self, asking for permission to do what it is so capable of doing.

Can you accept the truth of the body self, that it is your vehicle to everything you wish for in life? Can you release yourself from all that holds you back in life, all the fears that limit your access to your true abilities? These are the questions that one must continually ask the self if one is to evolve.

Remember: You are your body. Your body is your natural world. It asks you to pay attention to it every day. It speaks volumes. Can you hear it?

Thank you Jeanne! I leave my body when I channel her. It sits quietly and calmly, waiting for me to return my awareness to it. I am grateful for this process and thankful that I have indeed dared myself to change, to pay attention to what was going on in my inner world, my body self. Every day I see myself and the world in a far different way than I once did. I am thankful to Jeanne for all of her guidance over the past ten years. Her sound advice and gentle prodding have allowed me to change and live in a new world of greater awareness. I am thankful that I can give these messages to you each week. Thank you for being there to receive them!
Love,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

#765 Set Your Intent

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Written by Jan Ketchel with a channeled message from Jeanne Ketchel.

Today, I asked Jeanne for a message of guidance as we begin a new week. Here is what she offers us all:

My Dear Ones:

Do not be thwarted by the interferences that may appear as blockages in your paths—they are mere hurtles to be leapt over, mere lessons to quickly assess and move on from. If you find yourself stumbling along, unable to gain clarity, I ask that you point your radar innerly and question the self most directly, asking why. For it is only in asking the self to take full responsibility for all actions and decisions in life that you will evolve into an emerging being of light and energy, ready for the next journey. In finding the self open to life and its vicissitudes as a path of learning and higher evolutionary potential, you offer yourself the way to truth.

Do not shirk your responsibilities in life. Take care of those who need you and depend on you. Guide them, protect them, educate and teach them when necessary and appropriate, but do not force an agenda nor do their lessons for them. All must learn even as you have had to learn.

Some students of life are reluctant, refusing the greater calling, but that is not your problem. You can only be an appropriate teacher to such recalcitrant ones by your own example of living harmoniously, flowing with what comes to greet you each day, accepting your direction, taking responsibility and keeping yourself always in tiptop inner shape. By that I mean: keep your own inner process alight. Fan the flames of your inner work so that they never die, no matter what comes from outside to thwart you from your intentions.

On this day, I suggest that you set your intent for yourself and that you abide by the terms of your spiritual and life path as you desire, but also working with what comes to you each moment of the day. All may not go as you wish, but wait and see, for in the end your intent will rule. How that happens is the mystery and beauty of life. Learn from this day and walk on into your week stronger, both innerly and in the world you live in.

You are all on a journey of enlightenment. You are all prepared well. Everything you need is with you already. You are not alone and you will not fail.

Accept yourself as your own guide and life as your teacher. Pupil and master together, walk now onward into a new day. Every minute of your life is open and waiting for you to greet it.

Take this with you as you go into your day:

You are expected. The world awaits you. Greet it with openness as it also greets you. You are exactly where you should be. Happiness is in your heart and in your hands. Open both and you will discover that they work quite well together if you allow them to be your guides. Look at your hands now and ask them to hold your heart gently and kindly today as you venture on your day’s journey.

Here is a prayer to the Self:

Take me on my journey with gentleness and humility.
Carry me where I need to go.
I take full responsibility for myself.
My life awaits me.
I am open and awaiting it as well.
I go now into my life with openness and joy.

I am alive.
I am grateful.
I am faithful to my self and my journey.
I love myself for the lessons in my life,
as they lead to my own higher Self.
This I accept.

I am one.
I am whole.
I am all that.
Today my life begins anew.

Most humbly offered and with thanks to Jeanne.

Messages from Jeanne

#764 Flowing

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Written by Jan Ketchel with a channeled message from Jeanne Ketchel.

Today is the eve of the summer solstice and of Jeanne’s birthday, entry into the astrological sign of Cancer under which I was also born. I believe that a water sign challenges us to flow with life, to accept what comes our way and yet to not attach, but to constantly learn how to let go and keep moving on. This has been my personal process and now, as we enter the water sign of Cancer, perhaps it’s everyone’s present challenge: to learn how to flow with life.

As Riverwalkers, the name Jeanne gave us years ago when we set up this website, she urged us to learn from the river, to walk beside it rather than jump into it unaware. But, obviously, sometimes we find ourselves in the water, in constant motion, churning along seemingly out of control, dragged along by the current. Today, I ask her for guidance as we enter a new time of energetic alignment and consequence. What message do you offer us today, Jeanne?

Here is her response:

To flow with what life presents also means getting the self into a good state of inner balance and calm, for it is only in being innerly set that one will truly be able to flow through life.

What do you mean by innerly “set”?

I use the word “set” to mean grounded, anchored by inner knowing that the journey you are each on is prefect, that you are exactly living the life you should be living, dealing with what you should be dealing with at this particular time in your life.

Being set implies acceptance, but it does not mean that you sit back and let the river of life drown you in its turbulence or even its quiet boredom, but that you truly engage it, knowing full well that you are set on your journey. All you have to do is flow with it, as Jan suggests. This idea of flowing with life allows one to constantly confront what is presented while simultaneously investigating it for the potential it holds.

I suggest that deep questioning and processing of life’s issues, challenges, turmoils, emotions, and joys be fully explored so that all aspects of possibility in life are investigated and nothing is left behind unexplored.

One never does know where one will be led by the vicissitudes in life and that is the beauty of it. Do you choose though to be sad and depressed at your lot, tossed about by the waves and swells of the river of life, or do you choose to swim out of it to new ground? Do you choose to struggle against the current when there is another option? Are there boats in sight, islands to stand upon and gain new insights and perspectives from? Are there places of rest, both within and without, that you have failed to anchor in?

Get set inside the self as to how you desire your life to go from this day forth. Turn inward and confront the fears that keep you floating along but not necessarily flowing. There is a difference; floating implies no action, while flowing implies action and decisiveness.

Do you float through life without firmly being present and self-accepting, or do you flow through life accepting your own powerful abilities to direct, by choice, your direction?

Life is full of possibility. It offers, each day, a new choice, a new direction option. Even in the mundanity of life is there great opportunity to shift the self, even incrementally, if one chooses to be optimistic.

Seek the light upon the water, but be fully aware of the dark depths as well. Have respect for the power and the softness of this metaphor for life, for water cleanses, bathes, and gently touches the skin of babes, yet does it also destroy, cut down and through the strongest of mountains of stone. An essential ingredient to life, it must be protected, guarded, admired, and properly used for life to indeed survive.

Think of your own lives now, My Dears. Do you merely survive, or do you engage in life to the fullest? There are many things to learn from water, the flowing life energy not the least of them. How do you intend to flow with your life this week? What decisions will you make that are energetically in alignment with a new time upon that earth?

Set yourself firmly in your calmly centered self, anchored in your inner knowing, before you set off on your adventures into life—only then will you indeed be able to flow. Know the self well and then will you be set to know what else comes your way. You will know what to do because your alignment will be immediately apparent, your energy linking properly to its only possibility at that moment. That is what you will find if you can indeed flow with your life!

Good luck as the sun enters the picture, rising and setting over the picture of your life. Watch the moonlight as well, for all life is lit from above. Use both sun and moon, light and dark, day and night, inner and outer life aspects to guide you as you seek right alignment.

Most humbly offered.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: A Very Magical Time

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It’s been a little challenging lately to detach from all the political hoopla and hype, all the name-calling, finger pointing, joking, judging, and ugliness going on. In an effort to go into deeper solitude I’ve decided not to post what I consider apropos articles and blogs, even though they may certainly contain messages in alignment with what Chuck, Jeanne, and I regularly write about, because I find that my energy tends to stay stuck on them. Instead, I’m weaning myself off my usual checking-of-what’s-happening-in-the-media morning routine. Often just a quick fix—”Just to see what’s happening!”—I’ve decided to remove all the links from my bookmarks bar and stay away. Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! There they go! I just removed myself from the Internet. It’s so easy and really so freeing! From this day forward I am not doing, as the shamans say.

Not Doing what I normally do allows for experiencing everything differently, even if ever so slightly. My intent now can focus on what’s most important to me personally rather than on what is being thrown in my face according to someone else’s intent, greed, passion, fixation, penchant or desire. No longer bombarded by ads, pop-up windows, moving icons, and numerous other distractions, I can stay focused on nature—the magic of real nature—inside myself and right outside my window.

As I experience the early morning hours, before most people are out of bed, I offer myself the opportunity to connect directly with nature’s process. I stir when the birds stir. I listen to their morning chatter, the darkness of the night gently moving aside as the sky begins to lighten in the East and I’m happy to be alive, right then, at that moment. It’s a special time. Just waking from dreams, I’m often still connected to other possibilities. Still softened by the night, I don’t immediately jump to thoughts, but let my senses, my intuition, my spirit speak to me. It’s a magical time.

The opportunities to do something personally desirable and fitting are fully available at 4:30 a.m. I can meditate, channel, pray, write in my journal, jot down my dreams, or simply stand on the deck and watch the birds, the deer, smell the dew, catch glimpses of the last stars and breathe in the cool morning air. It’s a magical time.

As I continue working on the final draft of my book, The Recapitulation Diaries: The Man in the Woods—the first of three volumes—I’m struck by how intensely healing it is to be able to squarely face our traumas, to relive them, and excise them from our bodies, minds, psyches and spirits. In so doing, we offer ourselves the opportunity to return to a natural state of being, or perhaps even for the first time to experience what it means to be calm and contented enough to feel present in this world. It was all I ever yearned for, to feel like I really belonged here and to find out why I existed. I could not have achieved the place of calmness I now inhabit had I not challenged myself to go on a journey of a lifetime: into myself. In fact, I am certain I would be dead, eaten away by the stuff that festered inside me.

Electing to take a recapitulation journey was perhaps the greatest conscious challenge of my lifetime, which led to my discovering that I was indeed opening up to a journey of magical proportions. My experiences, as I took that journey, unfolded most naturally, as I relinquished my hold on the things that I had always counted on, much as I did today in excising the media links from my web browser. As I took that recapitulation journey I had to turn my back on a lot of crutches, habits, behaviors, safety measures, and even relationships, that I thought I could not live without and throw myself out into the unknown. I had to dare myself again and again to face life and my recapitulating process with nothing familiar in hand. I had to continually challenge myself to break through the barriers that kept me from fully experiencing myself in the world. And truthfully, just as I experience early morning as a magical time, my recapitulation process was also a magical time.

Deciding to take a recapitulation journey is deciding to truly live—on personal terms—unfettered by opinions, judgments, rules, pacts, secrets and lies. It is choosing to deconstruct, sort through the mess, and reconstruct the self with only that which is personally relevant. At first it may indeed feel like a death, because it is a dying process as the old self dies and a new self, mostly unknown, dares to push into life. The process is natural. Like nature we too have the capability of dying to old ideas and old selves and allowing for new life.

Now, during this growing season, I watch the seeds I’ve planted bursting forth from the earth, thrilled at the speed and energy of this new life. As I listen to the birds and taste the wild strawberries, I am reminded that recapitulation, that death to new life, is the most natural of processes. As I walk, I find the road littered with the critters hit by cars, yet I know that the crows will soon swoop down and feed off the carcasses, death leading always to life giving energy. If we choose to view it as such, we clearly see that this is a most magical time.

In choosing not doing, I choose to live on my own terms. I choose to continue recapitulating, going even more deeply into myself, questioning my actions, my thought processes, my habits, challenging myself to keep changing, to keep doing things differently, to face life and to face death, knowing that both of them are part of the cycle of nature. I find that in studying nature and the ancients—the Shamans, the Buddhists, the Hindus, etc.; teachings connected with nature, spirit, energy, and the experiences of being in all worlds simultaneously—I am not so fraught with concern about the changes taking place on the world stage. I am not so caught up in the frenzy or worry, but taking it all very seriously nonetheless.

I know that I must do my part to energetically stay in alignment with nature, to trust that Mother Nature (Pachamama, Gaia) is doing what is appropriate—perhaps she too is recapitulating because she knows it is time to do so. The Earth, as a living being, is most powerful and decisive and I must trust that her own process must be as destructive as my own recapitulation process was when I began it ten years ago. I must continue to accept that destruction is necessary for new growth and that the things happening in the world are all in alignment with a far greater process that none of us can fully comprehend. It’s a magical time.

I look forward to not doing today and every day, to seeing what else comes to greet me, what naturally unfolds as I set about my workday. It’s exciting to be alive during this magical time. The energy of change is powerful. I choose to ride it. I hope you do too!

Meet you out there,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

#763 Time for Solitude

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Written by Jan Ketchel with a channeled message from Jeanne Ketchel.

Here is the message I channeled from Jeanne this morning, simply asking her to give us all some guidance as we go into the day and the week ahead. This is what she advises:

Seek some solitude today...

I can only stress today that you take some time for solitude. It is crucial now that mankind turn inward for solace, inspiration, creativity, and even entertainment, for in constant outward attention is the spirit soon drained and left gasping for breath and notice.

Please treat your inner life as well as you treat your outer life—or even better than that—and you will have long days of peacefulness upon that earth.

Continue learning how to flow with your changing world. Change your attention to your inner world now more succinctly, paying attention to what comes to you as you sit in reverie. Use it to guide you in your outer life and in the world, as it spins, spews, and seeks to bring the messages of concern and change that are so necessary now.

Do not become desperate beings in the wake of disasters, but become silent introspective soul seekers. Only in alignment with nature will man survive the next few decades of severe drought and commercial devastation that will befall an unenlightened population.

Find notice of what is to come all around you, but find what you need within for your survival. The idea of survival of the fittest may determine your way, but for the future that is going to mean something beyond the physical. Learn what that might mean for you personally by investigating your deeper self. It is there that all answers lie.

Seek calmness and fortitude inside the self. Stop looking outwardly so much now. Turn to a different center of attention—at the core of every human being. It awaits your arrival. Visit it often now.

Channeled in a moment of solitude—from Jan and Jeanne