Tag Archives: intent

Messages from Jeanne

#717 The Pulse of the Universe Inside You

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Jan Ketchel channeling Jeanne Marie Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Today feels like the day we have all been waiting for, the culmination of a long and serious transition time. This morning I pulled a Tarot card and received The Chariot, a fine affirmation of all my personal intentions to live, work, and be within the flow of nature, both calm and flowing but also in motion, constantly daring myself to go beyond my limitations. This card is perfectly in alignment with where I am at this moment in time.

Drawing this Tarot card struck at the heart of change as I personally enact it in my life, setting my intent from a calm place of heart, yet remaining fully aware that I must push myself and sometimes even force myself to stick with my well-laid and well-intentioned plans. While I feel a shift today I also know that challenges will arise because that is the nature of the universe and it is how we are shown where our path lies. I know that I must stay connected to my intentions and on my path, but that I must also be alert, aware, and prepared for anything.

Perhaps many of your readers are starting this week in a similar state of calm determination, feeling the shift in energy as I am. Can you offer us advice for the week ahead as we set our intentions to flow, while at the same time we know full well that there will be challenges ahead?

My Dear Jan and All My Readers, find your heart center as you begin each day, taking but a few moments to locate and feel the intensity of this calm place that lies within each of you. This is nature at the core of each of you, the pulse of the universe inside you. This universe you speak of is not outside of you, but deeply embedded inside you.

This is the first thing to note: Your challenges come from within. Even though you may notice them being mirrored outside in the world and the people around you, and in your daily lives unfolding, note that they originate inside you, conjured by your spirit urging you to confront that which holds you back. The universe and all of nature lie at your heart center. Visiting this place daily will set you on your path and invite openness to that which comes, for you will, in your openheartedness, recognize your challenges as perfectly matched to where you are in your life. There will always be something to get beyond, to work through—and it will always be something personally important or it would not be there confronting you each day—until you have solved the riddle of it to your heart’s content.

The second thing to note is: Each day you must also make note of the energy outside of you, for it will also show you how your inner process must be conducted. You must learn to read the energy outside of you, in the atmosphere, in nature, but foremost in the people you come in contact with. You must learn to assess what is happening for others in your proximity and adjust your expectations and your own energetic output to both accommodate and challenge this outer energy. You must find balance between your self and your outer world without compromising your intentions to change and grow.

It is a good idea to consider the self as a separate being with a separate inner process that must be attended to. But remember that the inner self is not the ego self. It is not one of the archetypal personality functions of the psyche, but the spiritual self who adjusts and flows without attachments, without demands, without really revealing itself, but simply flowing with what comes, even though it is absolutely in the fore, in charge so to speak.

In directing your inner and outer worlds from your heart-centered inner spirit self, using your knowledge of how change needs time to unfold, to present challenges, and to be worked through, you will both maintain good balance and forward movement toward not only culmination, as you mention Jan, but transformation, so that you go beyond it to a new level.

And, of course, when you reach that new level you start all over again, challenging the self to change and grow some more, for that is life. But also, at each level, you are more aware, more firmly heart-centered, flowing more easily, and more firmly grounded in who you are, why you are there, and what you are meant to do with your life.

Good Luck. Ask for guidance in the form of balance, in the form of inner calm, and in the form of daring, so that you might push through all that appears before you.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: INTENT—The Ninth Step

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Hello everyone! Today I am keeping this super short.

On the night of November 1, 2009 I dreamed again with the women seers of don Juan’s line. As I mentioned in last week’s blog I recognize them by their energy. How do I know it really is them? That I can’t tell you, I just know it is. As soon as I put that little heavy dreaming pillow on my body I go into dreaming. I don’t know how this works either, but it does, immediately, so I am careful in how I approach it. I take it very seriously, and when I elect to place that pillow over my abdomen I know I must to be prepared to take a journey. Sometimes I am eager to take those journeys and other times I just want to sleep. The last time I used the dreaming pillow, a week ago, I stepped down into blackness, as I mentioned, and I haven’t gotten up the nerve to go back again — yet. But I will. And I’ll let you know what happens when I do, but for now I pass along the ninth step in developing a shamanic practice. Here is what I learned from the women seers and what I wrote in my nighttime dreaming handwriting on that November night last fall:

Use your intent to grow.
Learn by your mistakes.
Intent will find you.

Of course, I have been using my intent to connect with the women seers. So, as I also mentioned before, it really does work, if, as the seers say, it is unbending intent. So, I leave you today with a reminder that Chuck is fond of saying, and brings in last week’s step of no attachments: Set your intent; send it off; don’t attach to the outcome. And then, see what happens!

Thanks for reading!
Love,
Jan

Chuck's Blog

#685 Chuck’s Place: Boroughs & Bridges to the Truth

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America eagerly awaits its new Idol: Will it be Crystal; will it be Lee? The Tea Partyers eagerly await the opportunity to “throw the bums out” in the midterm elections. We breathe easier because the solid Admiral of the Coast Guard is overseeing BP. Natural gas companies are seizing the moment; offering the “safe” alternative to oil. After all, they blast 7,000 feet beneath the earth’s surface; how could that possibly effect the drinking water, or the cows pasturing on the farms above? Meanwhile, somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, one mile (5280 feet) beneath the earth, the oil continues to flow, unabated. Fortunately, we are “right on schedule” for a final capping off of the pipe, some time in August. There is evidence now that the oil has caught the current and is showing up on the coast of Florida, the same current that flows up the eastern seaboard. Naturally, specimens are being “properly analyzed” to verify their point of origin. Thank God for science!

From a different perspective, I view this broadening, enveloping nigredo, as black gold, perhaps the real next American Idol; the one we will learn to appreciate the most. The tragedy to the seas, to the habitats of many, including our own, is now threatened at an unstoppable pace. Nature itself has taken over now, demanding that we embrace the truth. It is downright heartbreaking to see the amount of destruction to innocent sea life. The entire food chain will be poisoned as a result of this catastrophe and the impact will be felt by all living things. It is evident that the human race, left to its own devices, refuses to face the truth of its destructive behavior to the planet. I call the nigredo “black gold” because it represents, through the magnitude of its destruction, our path to redemption. It is not just a “good” thing that we check our greed, become humble, and assume responsibility for maintaining balance in this world; it is the only means of survival. It is not about convincing anyone or overpowering resistance. Nature has lost her patience; if we don’t capitulate, we perish.

The water, from which we are all born, which sustains all life, will now poison life, until we face the error of our ways and change our gluttonous attitudes toward the planet. But do not despair! Change is on the horizon. No longer must we sit idly by in powerlessness as the forces of greed dominate the show. Nature is on board now, in a big way. Stay aligned with the truth, your inner truth, and join your intent with this evolutionary process, facing and embracing all our planetary truths, which are, from an energetic perspective, “right on schedule.”

Keeping with the themes of water and nature, I turn now more personal, to dreams from my life around the Isle of Manhattan.

In countless dreams, I am lost in the Bronx searching for the bridge to Manhattan. Eventually, I find the bridge. However, it is generally at various stages of disrepair, or under construction, or being dangerously flooded with enormous waves crashing over it as it sways in the wind. Sometimes, I am lost in Brooklyn, unsure of the direction to Manhattan or which subway to take. Occasionally, the current is calm and I can swim across the river.

My psyche, the self, the spinner of dreams, has chosen New York City, with all of its boroughs and bridges, to show me both the fragmentation within my psyche, the location of untapped resources or possibilities, and the status of my ability to both tap into and integrate them.

Psychic fragmentation is often caused by traumatic experiences where parts of the self are cut off from the mainstream conscious self and forced to exist in unknown isolated islands, like, let’s say, Staten Island. Who even knows anything about Staten Island, or conceives of it as being part of New York City? So forgotten are they, complain Staten Islanders, that they have even considered secession from the union of New York City.

Psychic fragmentation can also be the result of socialization, where unacceptable parts of the self are repressed, never allowed access to conscious life; in the place Jung called the shadow. Perhaps these parts are stored in another borough of New York City, such as in Brooklyn or the Bronx.

Finally, there are parts of the self that have simply yet to emerge, yet to be activated, yet to be discovered in life. These resources may also be stored in the outlying boroughs, perhaps in Queens, a royal borough.

The process of individuation is the challenge to gain access to, to claim and integrate, all the boroughs of the self into a conscious unified whole. Integration requires a network of connections that allow easy access to all the boroughs, hence the significance of the condition of the bridges in my dreams. Psychotherapy is the process of building solid bridges to all parts of the self.

The seers of don Juan’s line introduced the process of recapitulation, of reliving one’s life, in order to reclaim all vital energy lost to prior experiences, or that which is lodged in the outlying boroughs. Furthermore, they introduced learning to shift the assemblage point, what they call our major point of awareness, to different positions within our energetic selves to access the fuller possibilities of our innate potential. Their techniques to create this shift are:

1. recapitulation, where we volitionally shift the assemblage point to a different place of awareness, that of forgotten or repressed aspects of life experiences;

2. dreaming, where the assemblage point loosens as the conscious ego relaxes its hold on our point of awareness;

3. stalking, where we shift the assemblage point through volitionally interrupting our habitual patterns by acting-as-if, or by practicing not-doings; and

4. intent, where we access the power of intent to shift our point of awareness simply through intending it.

Both psychotherapy and the practices of the seers offer tools to individuate and actualize the full potential of the self. But remember, union requires open bridges to all boroughs, access to all parts of the self. It requires truthfulness and clarity, without deception or hidden agendas; no cover-ups or idolizations, no capping off of any parts of the self that are spewing black gold until you get the message and take appropriate action. In order to stand in the fullness of self, we must allow nature itself to take over, inner and outer, integrating it with what we already know about the self. The natural flow of events and consequences in our lives, even the nigredo, are integral to this evolutionary process.

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

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Messages from Jeanne

#682 Energy is What You Are

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Jan Ketchel channeling Jeanne Marie Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Though it has only been one week since we last communicated it feels like much longer. The energy of the past week stirred up and instigated a lot of stuff, forcing so many shifts that it was hard to keep up sometimes. Today, as I sit quietly in the emerging morning light, the skies are clearer, cloud free, though the winds are still with us. As I look back on the past week I feel like a tumbleweed that has been blown and tossed about by the four winds coming from the four directions all at once. Now I have landed for a while, still and ready to keep learning from what happened during the intensity of last week’s grand shift, as I see it.

When I woke up this morning, I commanded myself to remember, to not forget what I had experienced, to hold onto my awareness, so that I can keep allowing for changes to occur. It is so easy to get drawn back into a routine, to want to fall right back into the oblivion of unawareness. As Chuck wrote about in his blog on Saturday, we got swept up in the energy of the witches and that energy was wild, but we really enjoyed the ride! That energy taught me how far I have come as I have traveled with you and Chuck over the past several years, how detached I have learned to be, and today I realize how different I am, and how much I embrace what the witches teach.

I am open to hearing what you have to say to all of this, but I also wonder if you, in your present state, still embrace the teachings of don Juan and his apprentices?

First, I hear laughter, light and clear as a bell, and then Jeanne speaks: I have never left that world, My Dear, though I have assimilated many worlds in my teachings, as I have transcribed them to you over the past several years. Our work together has encompassed a vast array of ideas and topics, not limited to one facet of understanding, but taking in many ideas of spiritual growth. All such ideas and topics lead to one thing though, and that is an understanding of energy.

My entire collection of ideas, as noted and diligently put down in understandable language by you, my trusty scribe, is focused on teaching what it means to be energy, to become known to the self as a being of energy. This is all that matters. This is what one must learn in order to understand the world of your reality and every other world.

My intention all along has been to find the means, within the context of what you experience on a day-to-day basis, to be pertinent within the context of the lives you live upon that earth. To merely preach of peace and good will, to make promises in exchange for good behavior, to threaten and cajole offer no value but simply keep you bound to old ways. It is of utmost importance that you all understand that you will not evolve from that earth plane if you do not allow your selves to change.

If you do not seek awareness outside of your thinking mind, outside of the facts that appear so full of vital information, such as the grand discoveries of science, medicine, and technology, you will not offer your present lifetime anything different from your previous experiences upon that earth. It may be hard for many to grasp that they have indeed spent a lot of time upon that earth. You have all “been there and done that” many times. Eventually, it is the hope of all great teachers that their students will “get it,” that they will wake up and realize that their experiences in waking and dreaming life are the keys to understanding and seeing the world differently. Opportunities to change arise often, but do you elect to change?

I feel, as I stated, that I have changed a lot. I really do look forward each day to what will arrive as my next challenge so that I can learn more, experience more, and change more. This has not been easy, but the more my intent to change stays present each day, the more open I become. How can people dare themselves to keep going, especially when it becomes difficult, painful, and even frightening?

The best thought I can present you with at this moment, My Dear Readers, is to hold onto the fact that you are a being comprised of energy. If you allow your thoughts of self to dissolve into the nothingness of energy, you may tap into, even for a brief second, the sensation of complete freedom from the human physical self. In learning to detach from the body self and simply feel the energy that is the true you, you offer yourself the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak, the ah-ha moment. If your focus is constantly being taken off what is happening in your body, in your reality, with its worries about money, health, children, parents, car payments, decisions to make and the choices that others are making, and instead is placed on energy, you will eventually build up the confidence you need to allow the self to change. In increments, you must learn to crawl through the veils that keep even this energy self hidden from you, though all of you, without a doubt, have experienced this self. And I warrant that it has been quite often.

Begin now to understand fear as a means of teaching you how to access this energy self. Turn your fear into the teacher it really is. When you face a fear, repeat this mantra: I am energy. I am energy. I am energy.

A mantra is a prayer to the higher self, a reminder of truth, of intent, and of desire for that which is unseen, unknown, yet fully known at the same time. When you access your own energy you will see that it is a most familiar and calm place. It is a place of utter stillness, joy, and love. It is a place of understanding, of insight, where the normal confusions and questions dissolve and have no meaning. It is a place of utter presence, without form or attachment. Energy is what you are. Your process is to reconnect to it, inside you, without fear of what that might mean.

The world of don Juan and his apprentices is the world of learning about energy and how it works. It is a world that all of you have experienced, though you may not be familiar with its terminology. But, I guarantee, you have all had experiences of it in energy terms.

Personally, Jeanne, I feel so grateful for my connection with you and Chuck, who I feel are my teachers as well as my partners. I write this now from a place of energy, I know that, and anyone else who has channeled knows what this means. I thank you for guiding me on this journey. I know that experiencing ourselves as energy is how we will learn to evolve, as you have. May we all get there.

See you all in dreaming! That is where you will find me!

I know there are many readers who have been traveling with us for a long time now, though we have not met you. I believe that we can meet in our energy bodies and I invite you to try it, in dreaming. If we intend it with the intent to learn something about how to use and gain access to our energy, to gain control over it and to use it to really change, then we are doing something evolutionary, personally and collectively. So, I throw out an invitation to dream with me in that world of energy, to meet with me, Jeanne, Chuck, the women shamans perhaps too, and to access your energy body. Anybody up for the challenge? As Jeanne says: See you in dreaming! -Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: When the Time is Right!

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Today, I present the next two steps in learning to be a shaman that I learned last fall from dreaming with the women sorceresses of don Juan’s group. As I mentioned in my first blog regarding this process, I had been re-reading the books of Taisha Abelar and Florinda Donner Grau when I decided to do some experimenting at night, wondering if I could, by setting my intent, contact the women sorceresses of that group in dreaming. Over the course of a few weeks, I did, indeed, succeed in receiving, through what I consider to be dream channelings, a pragmatic set of practices. Each night I placed the heavy dreaming pillow that Jeanne had gotten at a Tensegrity workshop on my lower abdomen and asked to be taken on a learning journey. After reading Chuck’s essay on The Womb I realize that I was offering myself the opportunity to access the “knowing” that he wrote about, the knowing that all women naturally have. Here is the 5th step, as I dreamed it during the night of October 24, 2009 and as I wrote in automatic writing in my journal:

I am an old woman bored with the excuses of others, unimpressed by laziness or other reasons for non-doing. I listen patiently and I cause SHIFT. I shift the atmosphere with a FLICK! I conjure up a storm to shake them awake.

I wrote this in my journal the following morning: When I wake up from this dream, having written the above during the night, I am aware that holding back and non-doing are important, until it is the right time to shift, then take quick action and SHIFT! This is the fifth step in the shamanic process. (End of journal entry.)

With a busy day of travel ahead of us I was unable to write more at the time, but I do remember processing this with Chuck as we drove. I was struck by the utter boredom that came over me in the dream as I listened to the empty excuses that people were giving for not evolving or changing. At the same time I knew that non-doing, not attaching, was also key, that being patient was proper because we will all have to shift at some point, whether by personal choice or for reasons that are totally out of our control. In the dream I am an old woman, and I seem to have some power, like nature itself. As an old sorceress I know it is not my place to force shift, until the time is right.

In this dream, I learned that by staying in a place of non-doing and detachment, patiently observing and waiting, we place ourselves in alignment with the flow of nature. There comes a point when we know it is time to shift. That moment is as instinctual as breathing. If we are in the right alignment, aware and in balance, then we are able to enact the necessary shift for ourselves. Otherwise the shift will be forced on us. In the dream, I knew the exact moment when this was right, it was time, and I took quick action, without hesitation, because I instinctually knew it was right. I was like nature in the dream, actively creating a shift with a swift flick of my hand, shouting: SHIFT! The process of non-doing, in this case, is actually achieving the place of no pity, the term from the shaman’s world, that Chuck has also written about. By non-doing, by withholding reaction and being patient and detached, by watching and waiting, I achieved this point of no pity, which also allowed me, in the dream, to know when the moment of shift had arrived. As a follow-up to this shamanic teaching dream, I dreamed the following the next night:

I dream about my mother, bored, boring, complacent, living in a nursing home, having resorted to childish behaviors, reverting to an infantile existence. I have no attachment to her. I am completely detached, merely an observer standing in her room at the nursing home. I turn from her lying in her bed and look out a large picture window overlooking ancient water gardens. There are many shallow pools and ornately carved fountains, sculptures, and benches surrounded by stone walls and walkways. I calmly enjoy the beauty of it as I talk to one of my brothers about the fact that I cannot help my mother. No matter what I offer her, no matter how many attempts I make to give her evolutionary life, she continually chooses infancy. (End of dream.)

I am struck by this dream underscoring the lessons of the night before, the place of no pity, of non-doing, and of detachment, but in this case leading to knowing that I cannot force a shift on a person who does not choose to evolve. By nature and her own choices a shift occurred in a person who was once an adult, but who now (at least in the dream) is living out her final years as an infant in a nursing home. In these two dreams, my instinctual knowing, stirred by dreaming with the women shamans, is in play. By remaining in alignment and flowing with the moment, with nature, I am fully aware of appropriate action.

After this dream, I fell asleep again and dreamed another shamanic practice. I swam up into consciousness briefly and noted: Remember what transpires in dreaming. When I woke up in the morning, I knew that this was the sixth step in learning to become a shaman and I knew this meant: remember what happens in dreaming life and in waking life, because you cannot always be sure which is the dream.

I humbly offer my dreaming experiences as examples of the power of intent. During the weeks I dreamed with the women shamans I received answers in fairly straightforward and easily decipherable language, and I am amazed, as I read back over the pages of my journal, how the process unfolded. I admit, I do trust the process of setting intents. If I am consistent I get results; partly, I think, because I trust that I will be responded to in some fashion. If I allow myself to trust; innocently but without attachment to the outcome, as the shamans say, the response I get will be the right one. I seek to keep my intent pure and good, to keep it evolutionary, without either negative or positive overtones, without hints of doubt, and I am consistent in repeating my intent daily until I get results. As a result of this practice, I do believe we can all, men and women, access the natural power within us to learn what it means to truly evolve.

I am struck, again, by the synchronicity of what I am writing about, what Chuck chooses to write about and how Jeanne’s weekly messages all seem to align. On Monday, Jeanne spoke about remaining aware of how shift happens, of the role of nature, and of your own energy. Honestly, we really don’t plan these things!

Keep dreaming!
Love,
Jan