Tag Archives: intent

#737 Experience Your Innocent Self

December 6, 2010 Jan Leave a comment

Jan Ketchel channeling Jeanne Marie Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Today I ask you for a message of guidance for all your readers. Please tell us something of importance for our world, our time, and our spiritual progress. Thank you. I breathe into my heart center and accept your energy. What guidance do you offer us today?

Truth must reign. Honesty, fairness and truth must permeate every sinew of your body and every word spoken from your mouths, otherwise there will remain blocked energy, unavailable, holding you back personally and collectively. In order for advancement upon the earth there must be a new innocence established. This must begin within the self.

Only in allowing the true self access to life will true healing and growth take root. Only in acknowledging the superiority of the energy self will life advance beyond the pettiness and rivalry that now dominates your world. Only through accessing and utilizing the true self will your lives change and the world at large experience a much-needed shift.

You see, things have proceeded far from the original intent of man’s purpose. Life upon that earth was meant for experiencing the self in a world of solids, in a world of concrete reality so that the energy self could build strength and character, so that the lessons learned inside the structures of a life upon that earth could be more fully understood within terms of energy.

However, the energy self no longer dominates. The solidity of life upon that earth overshadowed the purity of the energy self. Thus a struggle began between the two selves. The energy self from which all are born and all will return has suffered greatly, but this is not to be despaired, for this is also its journey. The human self offers the lessons of life to urge this energy self to awaken.

Find in the human body the energy of life. Find the energy that is yours personally and do not be afraid of its innocence. Do not fear its exposure to the world, for it is only in allowing it to exist that you will change the position you personally occupy in that life and that world. In so doing the world itself will change, for the collective energy seeks change as well.

In experiencing your innocent self you will eventually be greeted in return with equal purity of energy from without. Set the intent to be open now so that your personal channel may be flowing, so that your energy may be available to give and receive. Set the intent to speak your truth both to the self and to others.

Set the intent to breathe and feel and act with goodness and honesty in every breath your take. Breathe out your negativity, your anger, your disappointments, your judgments, and your disgusts. Breathe in your truths, and your innocence will thank you for finally paying attention to its needs.

It is a long journey—the healing, awakening journey—but what else can you describe that would serve your soul? What else is there really that matters?

Thank you Jeanne!

Please feel free to post comments or respond to this message from Jeanne in the post/read comments section below.

Most fondly and humbly offered.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Gazing at the Golden Monk

November 10, 2010 Jan Leave a comment

“I would like to experience energy as it flows in the universe.” Yesterday I set this intent, asking both Jeanne and don Juan to hear me, and then promptly forgot about it. I then went about my morning yoga practice and afterwards sat down to meditate for a few minutes before jumping into the day.

I faced the backyard, sitting on my pillow in front of the sliding glass door, as is my preference; looking out into the gray, overcast morning. The leaves are gone from the trees now and the branches of the large catalpa tree are but gray sticks crisscrossing in an intricate pattern. I noticed a pentagram shape formed by two large branches and several smaller branches and in the center of this pentagram a nice triangle at eye level. This is where I chose to focus my gaze. I did my usual breathing to clear my thoughts and bring my attention inward. Then I let my gaze soften, holding it on the small triangular shape in the middle of the pentagram.

Gently breathing in and out and continuing to clear my head of interruptions by repeating the mantra I’ve given myself—”I detach” on the in-breath and “I intend” on the out-breath—I continued to soften my gaze. (This is a shortened version of a mantra I’ve been saying for a couple of months now as I meditate. The longer version, which captures the spirit of my original intent, is: “I detach from the structures of this world and I intend a new world.” But having set that intent a long time ago I now simply say the shorter, equally effective mantra, shutting out the world as I do so. So far it’s worked really well.)

Softening my gaze, keeping it focused on the triangle in the tree, the world and the branches began to blur. In a few minutes I noticed a golden glow beginning to emanate from the now blurry triangle. It took on the shape of a human torso, as if a golden statue were standing there, radiating golden light. There was no head and no legs, just a simple torso; neck, shoulders, chest, waist, and arms with hands clasped in front at the lower abdominal area, looking rather monkish.

As I gazed at this golden monk I heard a soft voice saying: “Let your gaze soften, just stay with it.” I followed the instructions and watched as the golden glow extended outward from the torso, filling the tree and the entire back yard with vertically flowing waves of golden light. Suddenly, the backyard was no longer dark and gray but instead full of trees with golden leaves and bright light, and everything was vibrating. I held it as long as I could, until my mind popped back in and questioned: “Is that the sun shining?” I lost the gaze and came back into this world. There I was looking out at the gray tangle of branches, the world as dark and overcast as it was when I’d started.

“What the heck was that?” I wondered. Then I heard that soft voice again saying: “You can find it again. Go ahead, do it again.” Once again, following instructions, I gazed at the triangle of branches. Immediately the golden torso returned and began to glow. I lost it. I snapped back to this world again, to the gray and overcast morning as my mind interrupted the experience with logic and doubt.

I heard the voice again: “Go ahead, do it again, just gaze.” I suspended all judgment and did it again. The golden monk returned, I held my gaze slightly longer and then lost it again. The voice returned, instructing me each time I lost my gaze to keep practicing.

“Do it again. That’s right; hold it as long as you can. Let your mind go,” it instructed, “just have the experience.”

I did this six or eight times in a row. One more time I was able to hold it long enough for the back yard to fill with the golden waves of vibrating light, for the trees to become clothed in golden leaves, to see the vertical flow of energy before it all snapped back to the overcast and dull morning that it really was, in this world. This world looked asleep and dead, but I saw it as totally energetically alive.

As I practiced I understood two things. One, that this was what the seers of ancient Mexico did when they sat and gazed. They held the experience for as long as possible, but then, rather than getting caught in the amazement or the doubt of the experience they simply did it again and again, training themselves to see energy as it flows in the universe, volitionally. Persistence is the key. Here I learned the value of repetition as Chuck wrote about in his blog the other day.

The other thing I understood was that by setting my intent and having forgotten I had done so, I called infinity to me. And infinity came! I could have brushed all this away as just my vivid imagination, dismissed it, but I chose instead to stay with it, to value it for the experience alone. By paying attention to that quiet voice telling me to try again and again, I got beyond the possibility of seeing energy to accepting the truth of it. This was my experience of learning to see energy as it flows in the universe, volitionally.

I learned that by setting my intent, letting it go, doing my practice—which included repeating my mantra, paying attention to what was placed in front of me, shutting down the internal dialogue, and listening to the guidance—I could have a shamanic experience with the golden monk and whoever else that was who was whispering so gently yet so convincingly in my ear.

I humbly offer this practice and these experiences of meditation, intent, and repetition so that others may find the courage to go have their own moments of seeing energy as it flows in the universe; in whatever way it comes, learning to trust the personal experiences. Oh, and by the way, enjoy them fully for just that: personal experiences of seeing energy!

If you wish, feel free to share or comment in the Post Comment section below.

Sending you all love and good wishes for good energy experiences,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

#733 Become Eagles Today

November 8, 2010 Jan Leave a comment

Jan Ketchel channeling Jeanne Marie Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
I awoke in the middle of the night and as I drifted back to sleep I asked you to teach me a shamanic lesson in a dream. I then fell into a dream about transforming energy from the dominant right side of this reality to the magical left side and back again. In the dream I was taking awareness from “The Eagle.” I had huge eagle wings myself, and I was sweeping energy toward my body, pulling it in from the right side, then from the left side, and then inward toward my chest and shoulders. I seemed to be learning a magical pass.

Can you please elaborate on this dream? What did it mean and why did you feel it was important to teach me that lesson?

My Dear Jan, when you ask, you receive. As you know, this has always been true, but, as you also know, specifically how you receive is up to the giver. This is true in all realities. On the other hand, if you ask for something specific, as you did in asking for a shamanic lesson, you will receive that specific request, however, the delivery is up to the giver as well. You see, in your request for knowledge I felt it was most meaningful to offer you something practical: a magical pass.

There are millions of magical passes, though not even a fifth of those millions of passes are known or utilized. Many of them you do without even knowing they are magical passes, though you may include them in your daily lives. So many and so frequent are these movements, filled with intent, that it is hard to be concerned with calling them one thing or another.

Be contented with the fact that in your very lives every action holds buried intent, and this is the crux of all magical passes, the intent that lies behind them. When you walk or skip or run you stir up ancient intent. Though you may not be aware of just what that intent is, you may be aware that something in you shifts, your energy, your mind, your senses. You stir up intent with practically every movement in that world, with the potential to offer you insight into infinity.

Now, in your dream sequence, I did indeed send you, upon your request, into a state of awareness where you knew how to shift your awareness from your right-sided self to your left-sided self and back again. This is an energetic process related to the energy body of course, but your physical body is what you must work with in that world. So, suffice it to say, your right side is your awareness in one world, the world you reside in most often, and your left side is your awareness in other worlds, including dreaming. Neither awareness is keenly aware of the other. Most of the time they are separate entities, only fully utilized one at a time. However, in dreaming a shift takes place whereby you may indeed maintain awareness of both sides of the energy body simultaneously. That was what you were learning last night.

The eagle’s wings pass is indeed an option for gathering your personal energy to greater awareness at all times. By sweeping the intent of awareness from the right side and then from the left side, as if you did indeed have broad feathered eagle’s wings, and pulling it into your heart center you begin to stir up these two awarenesses, mixing them together inside your energy body. But I also hazard that they will be most noticeable in your physical body as well. The eagle’s wings pass is quite accurately a good energy builder if you feel somewhat depressed, have low energy, or need a mental and physical boost. Simply sweep in energy from the right with your right wing, then from the left with your left wing, and then both together ending by wrapping your wings around your shoulders in an embrace of sealing in that energy.

This will invigorate your spirit, clear your mind, stir your heart and present you with inner calm all at once. Do not hesitate to do this pass whenever you feel the need. It is my gift to you.

Thank you, Jeanne. I am passing this message on to others. Is that okay? And may they also use this eagle’s wings pass?

Of course! That is a fine idea. It is not meant for you alone but for you to pass along, as are all the messages you encounter, if it feels appropriate. I encourage all of you to pass on what you learn in whatever way feels most right. For only in so doing will your lives evolve and your world too.

In the past you have mentioned that you thought the disciplines of the seers of ancient Mexico might be too archaic for modern man, yet here you have given us a magical pass. Have you changed your thoughts about Tensegrity as a practice? Should it be taken up more seriously by myself, as well as by others? I have never found it especially suitable to my personality, as I prefer yoga and meditation, though there are certain magical passes that I do regularly.

I do not advise anything along the lines of practice, except to advise that you find ways to stir up intent within your body, in both your physical body and your energy body. In order to evolve one must become aware, and to become aware one must wake up out of the slumber of that one world. One must open the eyes and be ready and alert to the experiences that abound, that in fact are being missed every day due to a lack of awareness. So however you choose to stir up your awareness works fine. In my book, your personal preferences must be appreciated and acceptable to you over anyone else, for it is your journey and your life. However, that being said, I do advise that in order to promote healing and evolutionary growth, awareness of the self as energy must be part of the process and this is why some sort of energy work is most beneficial.

This can be as simple a process as walking, as I mentioned earlier. This can be as easy as sitting quietly and learning what your personal energy feels like, as I have spoken of before in other messages. This can be a practice of yoga and meditation, as I know you are so fond of Jan, for it does indeed fit your personality and your quiet temperament. This may also be a more vigorous activity if that is what one needs to stir up the personal energy. It may depend on how long it has lain dormant and how far from its calling you really are.

Have you not heard your personal energy calling you? If not then it might be a good idea to begin stirring it up with the eagle’s wings pass as laid out thus:

1. Stand up and face the direction that feels most personally right and spread your eagle’s wings.

2. Breathe into your heart center and awaken your self. From the heart center invite your tender self—who may be afraid or simply dozing and unaware—to join you now, a little at a time, on your journey through that life, as you begin a new trip, so to speak, into the world of energy.

3. Sweep in energy from the right with your right wing and press it to your body and then release your wing back out to the side.

4. Then sweep in energy from the left with your left wing and press that into your body as well, releasing your wing back out to the side.

5. Then sweep in both wings of energy together, ending by wrapping your wings around your shoulders in an embrace of sealing in that energy.

6. When you are done release your wings and discover, My Dear Readers, that you do indeed have a vast storehouse of energy at your disposal, in fact an endless amount.

Invite yourself into the dream of awakening with your energy body fully present and participating in life. It is not so frightening as you may fear, for in reality it is who you are, in the reality of the true meaning of life.

Lift your wings, stir up your heart-centered energy and become eagles today, My Loved Ones. You cannot harm yourself or anyone else by doing so. You can only grow, heal, awaken, become alert, aware, and more fully present. Enjoy the experience!

Thank you Jeanne! As I was channeling and putting this up on the website today the winds were whipping and howling, as if the eagle were outside flying back and forth stirring up the energy!

Please feel free to post comments or respond to this message from Jeanne in the post/read comments section below.

Fondly and most humbly offered.

Chuck's Blog

#732 Chuck’s Place: Repetition

November 6, 2010 Chuck 1 Comment

The seers of ancient Mexico state that the only barrier between this world and infinity is the internal dialogue. The internal dialogue is the incessant conversation that plays in our heads from the moment of waking to the moment of sleeping. These inner conversations continuously tell us who we are and interpret, non-stop, the events and people around us. With our attention so fixated and monopolized by these inner conversations, we are hardly available to perceive or experience anything outside the world this internal dialogue generates.

The seers of ancient Mexico describe dreaming as a time when we are naturally freed of the internal dialogue and, as a result, journey into other worlds or other potential realms of experience. Those seers cultivate this natural phenomenon into a conscious art of dreaming where they volitionally journey into infinity.

Other traditions such as Yoga and Buddhism have discovered similar pathways to exploring infinity by achieving inner silence in meditation. Though deeply attracted to the value of these esoteric traditions, most Westerners experience considerable difficulty engaging in these practices. Perhaps it is the added burden we Westerners encounter at every nook and cranny of our existence—the external dialogue constantly telling and selling us on who we are, what we need, what’s new, what’s best and, most recently, the addition of all the latest news from our friends on Facebook. Is there any Western practice that can lead us to inner silence? I propose: Repetition.

When I was a preteen I was abruptly torn out of public junior high school, mid-year, and placed in Sister John Michael’s seventh-grade class at Saint Ignatius Loyola grammar school. Sister John Michael was horrified that I was left-handed but, even worse, that the quality of my handwriting was a dead give-away of demonic influence. For Sister John Michael the most important things in life were presentation and uniformity. I failed at proper lowercase loops on L’s, which I was taught must be clearly differentiated from loopless T’s. Lowercase F’s and P’s must sink below the line at the proper depth and angle, never interfering with subsequent letters on the next line. And of course, all letters must be consistently drawn, clones of each other. Sister John Michael taught me, through shame and fear, but most importantly through repetition: endless pages of letters until I got them right, consistently.

Repetition is a pathway to inner silence. If I mindlessly wrote a page of letters I was sure to receive a scolding, a sentence to blackboard writing after school under the watchful eyes of Sister John Michael, and the insistence that my mother sign my heavily marked up homework filled with red corrections. Hence, repetition must include mindfulness, being fully present versus falling asleep at the wheel of habit as the internal dialogue resumes its incessant chatter.

Don Juan made it clear that setting an intent and the repetition of it is key to harnessing intent. My suggestion to reach inner silence, the gateway to infinity, is to set the intent for inner silence, repeat it incessantly, with mindfulness, whenever it comes to mind: in the shower, walking, going off to sleep, waiting, etc. As with all meditation, attach to no outcome, yet know with certainty that silence will come. Expect nothing, wait with patience; simply repeat: “Inner silence, inner silence, inner silence…”

I send my gratitude to Sister John Michael, wherever she may be, for teaching me this deep shamanic practice of repetition. Unfortunately, I’m not so sure that she’d be proud of my handwriting, which I’m sure she’d still judge to be possessed!

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

#730 Chuck’s Place: Intent & The Left Body

October 30, 2010 Chuck Leave a comment

“The concealed advantage of luminous beings is that they have something which is never used: intent. The maneuver of shamans is the same as the maneuver of the average man. Both have a description of the world. The average man upholds it with his reason; the shaman upholds it with his intent. Both descriptions have their rules; but the advantage of the shaman is that intent is more engulfing than reason.” —From The Wheel of Time by Carlos Castaneda, page 138.

The seers of ancient Mexico, who view the energetic dimension of human beings, observe two distinct energy patterns, on the left and right side of the body respectively. The energy of the right body moves in a continuous rocking motion. The energy of the left body, in contrast, is more “turbulent and aggressive, moving in undulating ripples and projecting out waves of energy.” —From Magical Passes, page 140.

Those seers also note that the energy of the right body is the dominating force in human beings. The right body energy is rationality; the left body energy is what Carl Jung would call the unconscious. For seers, the left body is both the more comprehensive reservoir of human potential as well as the human door to infinity.

The energy of the left body is accessed in various ways. Carlos Castaneda describes many times how, after a blow on the back from don Juan, he shifted into a state of heightened awareness, opening access to the energy of the left body. In non-shamanic life experience, trauma can force a shift out of body into heightened awareness as well. The peculiarity of heightened awareness is a state of detachment with a heightened ability to focus, understand, and know, at a profound level, as the dominance of rationality is suspended. However, like Cinderella at the stroke of midnight, heightened awareness suddenly ends with a return to right sided dominance, and all the accrued knowledge and experience of heightened awareness fades and is forgotten. These experiences are nonetheless stored elsewhere in the left body awaiting retrieval. This is a major reason to recapitulate. Recapitulation is an exercise in retrieving stored memory. The functional value of recapitulation is to open the channel to the left body and infinity.

Intent is also linked to left body potential. While the word intent is generally bandied about, full of ego desirousness or right sided control in such expositions as The Secret, intent belongs to the realm of energy and the left body. Intent is beyond ego, beyond reason, beyond the mind.

“Intent or intending is something very difficult to talk about. I or anyone else would sound idiotic trying to explain it. Bear that in mind when you hear what I have to say next: sorcerers intend anything they set themselves to intend, simply by intending it.”

“That doesn’t mean anything, don Juan.”

“Pay close attention. Someday it’ll be your turn to explain. The statement seems nonsensical because you are not putting it in the proper context. Like any rational man, you think that understanding is exclusively the realm of our reason, of our mind.”

“For sorcerers, because the statement I made pertains to intent and intending, understanding it pertains to the realm of energy. Sorcerers believe that if one would intend that statement for the energy body, the energy body would understand it in terms entirely different from those of the mind. The trick is to reach the energy body. For that you need energy.” —From The Art of Dreaming, page 23.

There is no rationality to intent. If we want something from right sided awareness we develop a plan, employ a strategy, manipulate, and control in order to create an outcome. When you boil it down, that’s simply ego control, not intent.

Intent, from the left side, is a simple intent, stated, sent out—light as a feather—with no attachment. No reason, no control, no manipulation is necessary. A silent knowing that the energy body has received the intent and works its magic is all that is required.

The process of tracking the path of intent is synchronicity: everything is meaningful. Everyone and everything that presents in your life reflects intent in manifestation. Follow it, and be guided by it. Suspend judgment, the dominating influence of the right body, and track instead the meaning and signs of the unfolding events in your life.

These events are the signs of unfolding intent. The challenge becomes one of aligning right sided decisions with unfolding intent. So much energy is consumed by right sided resistance through doubt, fear, indecision, rationality, and, frankly, big baby refusal to take the unfamiliar journey beyond known habit, the rocking chair of right sided energy.

Perhaps our ultimate intent is the one we set from infinity before we entered this world, our reason for being here. That intent persistently presses upon our lives, through the years, seeking to awaken our right sided dominant body to its true mission in the world. In the final analysis, our reason for being in this life is to discover and acquiesce to this core intent; the one set long before the birth of the ego and the right sided human self.

Send your intent to your energy body; see what happens!