Tag Archives: intent

A Day in a Life: Dreaming Intent

February 16, 2011 Jan Leave a comment

To follow up on Jeanne’s message of the other day, Navigating the Mystical, I decided to practice intent last night. Right before falling asleep, when I was already drowsy, I set this intent: I intend to know the moment I am falling asleep and remain aware of dropping into a dream. I want to know the moment this is happening and retain the experience. Immediately, I closed my eyes and was aware of literally feeling like I was dropping into a dream.

This is what I experienced: I felt as if I were more than one being or awareness. I was the dreamer in the dream and a dreaming observer as well. I saw my own hand reach out from the left, palm open and facing upward. “Oh look, there’s my hand,” my dreaming self thought. Then almost immediately another hand appeared on the right holding a red flower in its palm, as if showing it to me or offering it to me. I felt I should look at it closely. My dream observer, aware of also being the owner of the hand said, “Oh, look at that, two hands, and look at that beautiful flower.” At the same time, my awareness as the dreamer in the dream concentrated on looking closely at the flower. It was as if I were looking through a microscope at this close up scene of the two hands, and I was both inside the scene with awareness and I was also the outer observer looking through the microscope. I woke up immediately and thought: “It worked! My intent worked!”

Enthused by this experience I decided to try again. This time, I set a new intent, which was: I intend to see everything in my dream with crystal clarity. Again I felt myself dropping into dreamland. This time I landed in a small rowboat. I appeared to be on an arctic lake formed by a melting glacier. It reminded me of hiking up Svart Isen, a huge glacier in Norway that I once tramped up and had a most amazing experience on, as I watched and heard the rumblings and shiftings of this massive ice flow, its colors almost Caribbean blues, a contrast that, at the time, I found remarkable. There on top of the northern world were the same intense blues of the waters of the Caribbean Sea; fascinating.

Anyway, in my dream, I am in this tiny boat floating without oars into the center of this huge glacier. Everything is crystal clear! The word “Crystalline” was repeating throughout the dream experience, in a sort of voiceover, though I knew it was my own voice. I floated further into the glacier and was soon surrounded on all sides by this crystalline world of ice. It was not blue as in my experience in real life, but absolutely “crystal clear,” just as I had set in my intent.

Again, I woke up out of this experience quite fascinated by the literal quality of my dreaming self and the response of the universe, as it so nicely allowed me to have these experiences. This reminded me of what Jeanne had said in the message on Monday, that you must remain aware of how your intentions or requests are answered, that they may not be as clear or straightforward as you desire. However, I thought my dream experience was humorously playing right into my intent to have an experience of crystal clarity. It literally gave me an experience of just that!

I find this process fascinating, the way the psyche and the universe, the dreaming body and awareness, do work hand in hand. I got what I asked for! In this case, I received several gifts: proof that intent does indeed work because I fell into a dream, I retained the dream experience, and I got crystal clarity, all the things I desired. And, in addition, my intent from the first experience “to remember” carried over into the second experience, thus showing that intent, once set, is planted for future use.

Perhaps my recitations on these experiences may add to your own personal incentive to try dreaming intent or any other intent. As subtle as these experiences may seem, they were in fact just what I asked for and I felt quite satisfied with the night’s work. The rest of the dream night proceeded from there. As I fell back to sleep the third time, I simply set my intent to keep going along the same lines. As I went deeper into sleep and dreaming, the word “crystalline” kept popping up, my awareness reminding me to look closely, very clearly at my dream world, which I was aware of doing.

See if this conversation that Carlos Castaneda had with don Juan, from pages 22 and 23 in The Art of Dreaming makes any sense in how dreaming intent works:

Don Juan explained that there are entrances and exits in the energy flow of the universe and that, in the specific case of dreaming, there are seven entrances, experienced as obstacles, which sorcerers call the seven gates of dreaming.

“The first gate is a threshold we must cross by becoming aware of a particular sensation before deep sleep,” he said. “A sensation which is like a pleasant heaviness that doesn’t let us open our eyes. We reach that gate the instant we become aware that we’re falling asleep, suspended in darkness and heaviness.”

“How do I become aware that I am falling asleep? Are there any steps to follow?”

“No. There are no steps to follow. One just intends to become aware of falling asleep.”

“But how does one intend to become aware of it?”

“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.”

Intend by intending? Find the energy body? Does it all sound too idiotic, as don Juan suggests? So what, just try it, set your dreaming intent and see what happens. These are the means to beginning a process of navigating the mystical, as Jeanne suggested. It works. Good luck and good dreaming!

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

Thanks for reading! Sending you all love and good wishes,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

#746 Navigating the Mystical

February 14, 2011 Jan Leave a comment

Sorry this is so late in getting out today!

Written by Jan Ketchel and including a channeled message from Jeanne Ketchel.

Over the past few weeks we have been exploring, with Jeanne, practical techniques for navigating through life while confronting our issues and embracing our journeys. As many of you know, back in 2001, I began a very intense three-year personal journey, a recapitulation, as the seers of ancient Mexico call it, reliving the most important and transformative moments of my life. However, it was not until I actually began that recapitulation process that I was able to clearly perceive those moments as the most important and transformational, before that they were either merely disturbing experiences or totally unknown memories. I also learned that if one has a knowledgeable, aware, seasoned guide as one takes the recapitulation journey, one is indeed fortunate, even though the bulk of the work to be done lies within the self, both the questions and the answers.

During my odyssey into my self, as I took that recapitulation journey, I was offered daily opportunities to break through perceptions, judgments, definitions, and just about everything I had previously been taught to emerge on the other side of myself in a new world. In more modern terms, I took a transpersonal journey, working from where I was in my life at the time and going far back through myself to emerge in the prebirth world of the so called collective unconscious, as termed by Jung. This transpersonal world is what I would describe as access to all knowledge, all worlds, through all time. It is where ancient wisdom resides, and where all things are possible.

Lately, Chuck and I have been studying the work of Stanislav Grof, who over the past half century or so, has explored the mystical experience in great depth, and who coined the modern term transpersonal to describe the realm of the collective unconscious. He was disturbed by the fact that within Western modern science and psychology there was nothing to define the mystical experience, no categories existed and no credence was given to this most ancient of experiences. Experiences of the sublime, such as out-of-body and near-death experiences, as well as transcendent meditation experiences were given little or no value. In essence, experiences in the ancient pre-scientific world were pooh-poohed, dismissed as meaningless and crazy in the face of real hard-proven scientific fact. Grof seriously began to explore and document mystical experiences and attempted to bring this ancient wisdom into mainstream psychology. It still sits somewhat on the edge, though many, many people in the West have been offered validation and acceptance of their experiences of the unexplainable through his work and that of many others.

Anyone who has had experiences of the mystical knows how impossible it is to dismiss the experience, especially in cases when it has been transformational. Of course, it can be pushed aside as meaningless or disturbing, which is what I once did in an attempt to stay in tiptop control over everything in my life, but as time went on it became increasingly more difficult to do so as the experiences began to intrude on real life. It was not until I was ready to receive the messages that these mystical experiences were attempting to deliver that I could finally turn and look them straight in the face. I believe everyone has had experiences of the mystical and sublime and, when ready, these encounters will be accepted into conscious awareness.

In undertaking a recapitulation journey, if properly guided, we learn not only how to use these experiences to continue our life’s journey, but we may also be afforded the opportunity to use them to transport us to the transpersonal realm, where all knowledge exists, the personal, the pre-personal, and awareness of the interconnectedness of all energy, including us.

I have, and I say this with great humility and thanks, learned to transport back to the transpersonal quite easily. Through my recapitulation process I eventually learned to trust the mystical experiences I had, to allow myself to go where they took me, documenting my journeys, gathering from them the truth of the real possibility that all of us can access this transpersonal world volitionally. Although Grof led many experiments into the transpersonal using LSD, I have never used drugs. I didn’t need them. Life itself was enough of a catalyst to get me where I needed to go, as it rocketed me into the surreal over and over again, both before I ever heard about recapitulation and then certainly once I began that journey.

Once I learned to cultivate those experiences, understanding them as meaningful experiences of awareness, I gained a personal understanding of the mystical and how we can use it to guide us, through understanding not only life, but death and the greater universe as well. Now, after ten years of journeying by choice, I know I can never stop. It is my path, my intent, and my most personal challenge as well. Unfortunately, I can’t live there all the time, much as I would like to. In the meantime, I am happy to write about it, and help others achieve the peace it offers.

What I am getting at today in this blog is the true fact that we can all do this. I am nothing, no one special. I call myself by no name except the one I have in the real world, and even that I am not that attached to. In all the work I do, I seek only to offer guidance based on what I have learned through my experiences in the transpersonal world, the shamanic world, a world where everything goes, where one is able to access the darkness as well as the light, where one can experience the mystical without fear. It is my greatest wish that all of you be able to do so too, to allow for the mystical be a fuller part of your personal journey, without fear.

Once again, I turn to Jeanne, my personal guide and yours, and ask her to offer some insight into how we can access her world. How can people access your world, especially those who do not have access to means beyond their control, as I did, or just perhaps do not realize they do? Jeanne, what guidance do you offer us today along these lines?

Access to the mystical, as Jan terms it, is really only available through the self. One cannot have such experiences through others, but only through personally challenging the self, for otherwise there is no meaning to be had. In reading of such experiences one gains great benefits; by that I mean: the benefit of suggestion. Use of suggestion and awareness of possibility lead to intent, and that is the key to becoming open to all experiences, no matter what world one wants to enter.

Say you wish to get a new job. A new job may or may not magically appear, but I guarantee that if you set your intent for a new job, visualize yourself in it and set your specific requirements, that job will materialize. Intent works very specifically.

Intent can be used in all cases of desire. It can result in negative as well as positive challenges. You can intend illness, death even. You can intend a fuller life, drastic change in your personal experiences upon that earth. Your intent affects you, but others as well. If you keep your intent focused on the self, on doing inner work, on challenging the self to learn how to become nonjudgmental and pure, you are doing not only the self, but the entire world a favor. So, all of that being said, if you begin to set your intent in a certain direction, you will have experiences.

If you wish for experiences of the mystical, I suggest you begin a process of intending such experiences, but you must then be ready for what comes. I do not mean to alarm you, but you had better also set your intent to be able to withstand the process that will undoubtedly unfold. You must also set your intent to become aware, so that you do not dismiss what comes to you. You must be able to comprehend that it is truly happening.

Yes, I agree with Jeanne wholeheartedly here. This aspect is perhaps the most important. If you aren’t able to recognize the mystical experiences as such you will miss a lot. I still have to train my awareness, to find ways to allow myself to accept the truth of my personal experiences without the rational mind interfering, whether psychic knowing or experiences of the sublime. Noticing them and fully accepting them can be a challenge, as the rational will always step in to correct, that’s its job; and then there is the ego to deal with too, but that is another blog. What else should we set our intent to do, Jeanne?

Intent must be embraced wholeheartedly and used wisely, in an all-encompassing, thorough manner. Do not shirk yourself from having a full experience by laziness or over-eagerness. It is a serious matter and a serious process to engage in, this desiring entry into other worlds. One must be ready. You may already be at the point of readiness, but use practical and intelligent steps in setting your intent, otherwise you may not notice or be able to fully comprehend your experiences. But that being said, I do not wish to thwart any effort or desire for action. Take action on your personal behalf with innocence at your core. You can even set your intent for accessing innocence, for an experience of pure innocent energy, for instance, and you will surely have it.

As I mentioned, your awareness is key, as well as your attention to how your mind works, for it will pop up immediately to tell you that, “Oh, that didn’t just happen.” If you listen to that you will of course not be able to fully access the experiences that you so desire.

For what reasons can you suggest that people might want to access the mystical, Jeanne?

There are, of course, a multitude of reasons, personal and otherwise, but I would suggest that, to begin with, you stick to the simplest reason: to have an experience of energy, because that is really what this is all about, experiencing the self as energy. You can do this while awake, asleep, in meditation, volitionally. Or you can call upon the universe to give you the experience and then be ready for what comes; be alert, and wait for its arrival. If you ask for something you will receive it, but in what form you do not know; so you must be alert and understand how the universe sees fit to address you at this time in your life.

Beyond that simple reason—to simply have an experience of the energetic interconnectedness of all things—a far greater purpose of such experience is to gain personal awareness and insight, so you can understand why you are you, what you are alive for, where you came from and why, and where you are going. The greatest purpose in life is to gain awareness and that involves awareness of energy, how it works—not intellectually as so many do—but by personal experience. And, as Jan suggests, accessing the mystical, simply because you want to, is a good way to start.

I also warn that if you are not ready, that is okay too. But I ask that you begin to open to the truth of the mystical anyway, that you begin training yourself to trust that it is possible, that you will one day be ready, and that you will be better prepared when that day comes by your openness to and your awareness of the possibility that everything is available to you, the mystical as well as the rational.

Good luck, My Dears, as you challenge yourselves into having new experiences. You can do no great harm to yourselves, if you stick to practical and sober means. And please be patient.

Thank you, Jeanne!

Please feel free to post comments or respond to this message in the post/read comments section below. And thank you for passing the messages on!

Most fondly and humbly offered.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Beyond Belief

January 29, 2011 Chuck Leave a comment

“Do you believe in God?” asks John Freeman of Carl Jung in a 1959 BBC interview.

“Now?” asks Jung. “Difficult to answer… I know… I don’t need to believe… I know.”

“What is the practical importance of the out-of-body experience?” asks an Italian interviewer of William Buhlman, prominent out-of-body explorer, researcher, and author, in April 2008.

“The most important thing about an out-of-body experience is the ability to obtain answers… the ability to go beyond beliefs… the out-of-body experience gives people the opportunity to verify their own immortality,” replies William Buhlman.

The out-of-body experience (OBE) is the experience of consciousness separate and apart from the physical body. This experience is most frequently first encountered in a dream state when awareness is suddenly awoken by a sensation of intense vibration that leads to the separation of consciousness from the physical body. Frequently, people report floating up from or rolling out of their physical bodies, which remain asleep and frozen, in a state of paralysis. This emergence from the body is experienced as still being contained in the body, however its movements are dictated by thought versus physical action. The shamans call this the energy body and others call it the astral or ethereal body.

This awakening to one’s energy body is experienced spontaneously by most people at some point in their dreaming life. Don Juan suggested that the experience of the self as energy, the dormant energy body, is a potential available to all, simply waiting to be called into action.

The initial reaction to an OBE can range from terror to exhilaration. My own reaction to my youthful OBE was very similar to Robert Monroe’s, a pioneer in OBE exploration in America. I feared death, as did he, and I feared a brain tumor, as did he. Like Monroe, I was cleared of tumors after neurological brain scans, and also discovered that I wasn’t going to die, however, in the absence of more knowledge I remained terrified. In contrast, as Monroe states, in a 1992 interview at his institute in Virginia, he had the benefit of a discussion with a psychologist friend who informed him that his experience would be quite normal in India. He suggested that Monroe move to India and study under a guru in an ashram for ten to twenty years to hone his skills in OBE. Though Monroe was not prepared to leave his wife, child and business for a decade or two, he obtained the knowledge that his experience was not abnormal and began his own Western exploration of OBE.

In fact, the knowledge and experience of life beyond the body is highly refined in Eastern systems of yoga and Buddhism, as well as in shamanic cultures both East and West. This has been Carlos Castaneda’s greatest contribution to our time: awakening all of us to the equal opportunity to find our energy bodies and answer for ourselves questions of immortality and life beyond the body.

There are many roads to awakening the energy body and beginning a personal exploration of infinity: trauma, sleep deprivation, drug use, yoga, meditation, holotropic breathing, Tensegrity, hypnosis, channeling, prayer, fasting, creative dreaming, near death experience—in fact, the list may be endless.

In my experience, intent is all you really need. Intend to find your energy body. Intend often; it will happen. What stands in the way for most people is the rational mind. “I don’t believe in an energy body,” the mind will say. My response, “Good! Beliefs are useless.”

Be a scientist, find out through your own personal experiment. Suspend judgment, like any true scientist. Set up your experiment. Intend your energy body, gently, persistently, every day, for weeks. Then, see what happens!

See what questions you might begin to answer through your own personal experiences and knowing.

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

Until we meet again,
Chuck

NOTE: All cited interviews are available on YouTube. Click on the links: Carl Jung, William Buhlman, Robert Monroe. You can also read about Chuck’s experience in The Book of Us, p. 5 or in this Chuck’s Place Blog.

Messages from Jeanne

#743 Navigating a Path of Heart

January 24, 2011 Jan Leave a comment

Written by Jan Ketchel and including a channeled message from Jeanne Ketchel.

Last week, in my conversation with Jeanne she established the importance of setting intent using two significant mantras: Everything is possible and Everything is meaningful. If we go the next step in learning to navigate life with those two ideas firmly embedded in our subconscious, simply through the practice of repeatedly saying them for five minutes each day, we open ourselves to experiencing reality differently.

For instance, if we look at everything that happens to us, comes to us, greets us, meets us and confronts us as personally significant we begin to understand what those two mantras can do for us in helping us expand our awareness. For that is the purpose of life, I believe, to expand our awareness beyond the issues of self, of poor me, of blame, and self-defeat, and to instead open to the universe, knowing that it provides everything we need.

I ask Jeanne: What would you offer as the next step in expanding our awareness, as we begin to more thoroughly practice the intent of navigating through life by becoming open, by setting our intent to more fully open to guidance from the universe?

Jeanne responds: The next step in opening to the guidance of the universe is emptying the self of all ego-related wants, desires, ideas and importances, and becoming a truly pure being. I do not mean pure in the sense of making the self over by force of any kind, but pure in the sense of emptiness, of being open without thoughts of personal gain, personal implications of any sort, but instead resorting to pure innocence of spirit, that which one is born with. This innocence involves no motives, no desires, no attention, no ego self, but is pure energy of curiosity, of love, of openness to truth of self and of the world, as it comes to greet you each day.

This pureness of heart, this innocence I speak of, does not find what it needs in that world, for there is nothing that it needs there. All it needs is permission to live. And this permission may only be granted by each individual.

As you begin to intend change in your life, you will find that you will be confronted with many feelings. You will question whether or not you are doing it right, or if you are indeed worthy of allowing the self to change. These questions, and many others that arise, must be viewed as attached to that world where your self-importance has had to play a part of utmost importance in your life. You have had to spend your life building up and supporting your ego, for that is the system you live under.

But, if you are reading my messages, and the messages of other guides, then I guarantee that you are no longer interested in upholding that system. After a while, such a system drains all of your energy, depletes your storehouse, and leaves you wondering what you have been doing your whole life. Who have you been living and working for, and for what reason? Is it simply because you have followed the ideas of the system? Is there another path?

Yes, I trust that you, if you are reading my words, do know in your heart that another personal path exists. It does not exist as a well-laid out system with rules and diagrams, for it is not that kind of path. It is a path that is, as of yet, not revealed. The spirit of it may have been revealed to you a long time ago, but you will not learn about it again until you tread upon it, taking one step at a time along its unknown route, following the synchronicities inherent in life, in nature, and in each one of you, as you open to a new way of living.

Learning to navigate along a path of heart requires that you be open. And that is what I suggest you study next. Find out what it means to personally open yourself to your innocence, to allowing your true spirit self to become your eyes, your ears, your voice, your intuition, your heart.

The first thing to remember is that, at all times, you must study and know who the old self is. Only in knowing how the old ego-based self works will you not be fooled or caught as you attempt this most significant change. The old self is full of habits, thoughts, ideas, judgments. The old self is fully ready to dismiss your innocent thoughts and ideas. The old self is not very open to navigating life in a new way. It is ready, at all times, to fall back into the comforts of the system it has grown up in.

So your first challenge will be to learn how it operates, studying how it reacts to life or does not, what it chooses to believe about the self, and what it most often desires. This old self is your most helpful companion as you seek your new innocent self. Use this habitual self to look elsewhere, to steadily tell it: “No, not that way. Let’s look for a new way.”

Look at the possibility that even the tiniest and most insignificant sign you receive may be the catalyst to change. What does that birdcall mean, the one you hear most noticeably today? What does the nagging noise mean, or the message from your boss, or the anger that arises when you feel rejected or ignored?

What else can you do or feel or take note of in your life? What other sign is available to point out or introduce a new way of thinking, feeling, perceiving, or navigating life?

When I say that life, that the universe, that nature itself offers you everything you need to change and grow, I put each one of you in the same categories. You are life. You are nature. You are the universe. Everything you need is inside you.

Set your intent to change. Be open to the possibilities that come to you. Know fully that everything is meaningful by studying your self and your experiences. Then take it another step and use what you now know to live your life according to a new plan of unfolding life. Allow your innocence to wake up with you each morning eager to explore the world, looking for the resonance of heart in all you do. That is how you will begin to more fully live with universal intent.

It is up to each one of you to do for the self what no one else can do for you. Seek guidance by all means. Seek help of those who have done the work and continue to face challenges, knowing full well that the best teachers will always set you to task, asking you to have the experiences that only you can have, that only you can enact, that only you can embrace.

You are the universe. Yes, that is true, but that will mean nothing and get you nowhere if you do not go and find out what that means. You are nothing until you do, though you hold always the possibility of that universe inside you. It is only in having personal experiences of the self as truly open, daring, and honest that you will discover what it means to have access to all things within.

The true path is to go within, to navigate the self, to become innocently empty once again so that you may truly be open, using the outer world as guide to finding the path of heart.

Learn what it means to navigate life and evolve, one step at a time. It’s hard work, but it is truly worth the effort!

Thank you, Jeanne!

Please feel free to post comments or respond to this message in the post/read comments section below. And thank you for passing the messages on!

Most fondly and humbly offered.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Experience as a Path

January 19, 2011 Jan 2 Comments

As I write today, we are again immersed in frozen winter weather in the Northeast, a time that offers a most singular experience, forcing us to curtail our activities and deal with its impact, which can suddenly and unrelentingly take over, causing devastation and undesirable change. It is at times like these that I realize how insignificant we are in the path of nature.

I find myself of no importance as I face the snow and ice, the downed limbs and power lines, and as I battle to clear our driveway, scrape the ice off our cars, and keep our house warm. We don’t really matter to nature, and yet we are part of it. This is, as I see it, the same message from the shaman’s world, the world of the seers that asks us to accept our insignificance, to lose our self-importance, yet to utilize and value our experiences. How do we reconcile that dilemma, the idea that we are insignificant with the idea that we are here in our lives to have incredible experiences? How do we make sense of this conundrum?

For the past ten years I have been immersing myself in the shaman’s world; specifically, but not limited to, the world of the seers of ancient Mexico as described by Carlos Castaneda. I came into the seer’s world by intent, I believe, intent that I set long before I was even conscious, nature at its most basic. But my life’s challenge was to gain enough awareness, by becoming fully present in this world, by becoming increasingly open to seeing that everything I experience in this life may not be what I, at first, think or perceive.

My true introduction into the seer’s world really began when I first met Chuck Ketchel, though, as I have mentioned in previous blogs, I had read and felt an intense resonance with the early books of Castaneda when I was in my early twenties. It was not until I was ready, however, that the seers’ world really opened up for me, or perhaps that I opened up to it.

In the beginning, I admit, I was somewhat skeptical about the seer’s world, though never reluctant to explore its meaning or the possibilities it offered. I was ready and I met the right person to introduce me to a way of viewing life and life’s experiences from another perspective. In learning about this world of the seers, I learned that the experiences I had previously had were the necessary foundations for taking a journey of intelligent and complicated growth. My continued experiences are equally necessary, if I am to lose my self-importance and face my own insignificance, as well as my death.

Of course, this is a very personally resonant journey that I am on, and I know that not everyone will find what they seek in the seer’s world. There are many other paths that run parallel to this experiential world of the seers and I have a strong connection to some of them, having also been deeply immersed in yoga and meditation, and having had paranormal and psychic experiences my entire life. But even those paths and strange experiences became clearer, began to make greater sense to me, as I continued my voyage into the world of the seers of ancient Mexico, for I found that the seers offered explanations for experiences and encounters that I could not find explanations for anywhere else. Other paths and modalities did not offer the fuller picture that I have felt so resonantly in the seer’s world, often dismissing or avoiding the deeper healing that I have gone through as I engaged in the processes of recapitulation. The seer’s world gave me a new understanding of life from the experiential perspective.

I was never a religious person, but I have always been a spiritual person. Although raised a Catholic, taught by nuns, I knew at an early age that there was no resonance in the rhetoric and teachings of the catechism or the dictates of that paternal organization. Even at the age of seven I knew I was a doubter, that I could neither uphold nor fit into the Catholic mold. Perhaps with that knowing I unconsciously set the intent for future experiences that went far beyond the world of parochial education and expectations.

I have learned more fully, especially over the past ten years, that our singular journeys hold all we need to evolve, in our experiences. Our experiences are showing us what we need to learn, as they provide us with exactly the challenges that will move us beyond our present incarnation. In the seer’s world, I have found indescribable release from the dictates of a world that never quite made sense to me.

I have also found that my years of discipline in yoga and meditation serve me well in the seer’s world, and are in fact deeply utilized in that world—though different terms are used, the principles and practices are the same. The Buddhist principles of the middle way, of detachment, and gaining enlightenment are also deeply entrenched in the seer’s world. In the seer’s world all of these things, and many more that I may not even be aware of, are given credence and value. Everything is given a place in the seer’s world, without judgment, yet at the same time we are constantly presented with not attaching to any of them. The seers expect us to fully live our lives, embrace our experiences, and yet never forget that we are going to move beyond this world.

As I look out the window now and see the cold white snow and ice, I understand this concept, this dilemma more clearly. For what the seers present to us is the truth of nature—it is what it is—and we can do nothing about it, except accept that we are here and be impeccable in how we choose to live in this world, how we choose to face oncoming time, winter included, death included, as well as all the experiences that nature affords us. For yes, we are beings who are going to die, but in the meantime we are forces of nature that cannot do otherwise than live in this world. And yes, I have more snow and ice to shovel!

If we choose a path of experience, perhaps we will not only advance ourselves, but offer a new kind of challenge to those around us: to advance and evolve as well.