Tag Archives: intent

A Day in a Life: On Healing

March 7, 2012 Jan Leave a comment

I spent most of my life in deep depression. I rarely emerged, rarely felt truly joyous, rarely embraced the gifts that life and the universe saw fit to present me with. It was much easier to embrace the negative, self-deprecating person I was used to, the familiar self.

It was not until I began the process of recapitulation that I discovered that the personal issues and ideas I had been so wrapped in were extremely harmful to me. In recapitulation I discovered, as well, a means of release from them. I believe that we have to be ready for the process of recapitulation, that perhaps if we begin it too early we are not prepared for the tests and lessons it will ask us to go through. By my late forties I was ready, but up until then I had to use my normal habits and behaviors—and often sheer force of will—to keep me functioning and stable as I dealt with PTSD.

I found inner calmness in meditation and yoga. I used walking and running to keep me physically present and healthy, while my creative artist self kept me safe and productive. Whether we are doing recapitulation or not, such practices are always available to us, as well as many other methods of calming our minds and bodies, so that we can be functioning adults in a world that we might not feel safe in.

I believe that, at some point, everyone will be confronted with making the choice to heal or not, to recapitulate or not, to face their darkness or not. And it truly is a choice. Personally, I was too fed up with my depressed self to live with her anymore. A drastic approach to her issues was needed and so I was led to recapitulate. My spirit would not rest until I had freed it.

In doing recapitulation, I discovered the incredible power of the mind, body, and spirit to heal. Since then I can truly state that I am rarely depressed. I am mostly full of joy and wonder, my energy light and happy. Lately however, I have felt heavy energy descending upon me, weighing me down. At first, I was confused. I searched within myself. Am I missing something? Is there something I have to recapitulate still from my childhood? After much personal investigation, I detected that I was carrying the energy of others.

I am good at reading energy, open to it, aware that it’s a necessary process as I evolve. This is an ability that I’ve trained and honed, a skill that has become a bigger part of my life as I have grown over the past decade. I use it to channel, for instance, but it has become increasingly clear that I must gain better control over this energy, become better at redirecting it away from me. It’s okay to read energy, to feel and perceive it flowing in the universe, but I must not allow it to rest upon me for even a second. I know that if I carry it for others then they don’t have to deal with it themselves and they will never heal.

I’d been dealing with the heaviness of this energy from outside myself for a while before I understood what it was. I’d look at myself in the mirror and not recognize myself. I’d put on my clothes and find they didn’t fit right. I’d walk stooped and drooped, the heavy weight of negative energy and worry lying heavily upon my shoulders. My energy was low. I had lost my usual lightness and joy.

Finally, I rejected what did not feel like me, what felt so alien and uncomfortable. I shook off the negative energy, the heaviness. I shook it off several times throughout the day, and each time I did I confirmed that, indeed, it did not belong to me. Now, when I look in the mirror, I look like me again. My clothes feel good on me. I walk in my body.

I practice Tonglen breathing around the negative energy, to protect myself but also to channel it for others in a positive way. I breathe in negative energy and exhale positive energy. I breathe in fear and breathe out fearlessness. I breathe in sadness and breathe out happiness. I breathe in the heavy weight of depression and breathe out the joy of release. I breathe in worry and breathe out calmness and contentment. In all of these ways I energetically cleanse and heal my energy and I also aid others in cleansing and healing their own.

In allowing ourselves to accept that we are all healers, that we all have the power within to heal ourselves and others, we can begin to practice and hone our healing skills immediately, whether we are engaging in the process of recapitulation or not. In letting go of negative feelings and thoughts about ourselves, by letting in only good and positive thoughts, we begin to free ourselves of so many problems and ideas, and we begin to change.

We can effect change by setting our intent to do so and then practicing Tonglen or other healing methods. By imagining our bodies being swept clean of disease, discomfort, pain, worry, etc., and by imagining all of that negative energy flushing out of our systems, including our minds, hearts, and spirits, we set ourselves on a healing path. Setting an intent to heal and then acting on it is all we really need, but it is experiencing our intent manifested that brings the biggest reward. It’s easy to keep on our healing path once we experience a moment of joy, a glimpse of light at the end of the long dark tunnel. When I change the phrase “I’m depressed today” into “I’m quiet and calm today” and gather up all that depression and brush it off me, literally brush and flick it off, I feel myself change.

I have often utilized the skills of an energy healer. She is extremely good at what she does and has healed many people from the most horrific of diseases and maladies. She gathers up the bad energy, flicks it away, and replaces it with good energy. It’s not that hard to do, but what is hard is trusting that this is how energy works. My healer learned this in an environment that knew this, that had no doubt. Although we can’t see energy, it is nonetheless present inside us, being bad for us and doing bad things to us, as well as being good for us and doing good things for us. We all sense this on a daily basis. When we are happy we feel good inside. When we are sad we feel bad inside. Although our Western culture may work against us, it’s not impossible to replace our ingrained disbelief with a more open mind, by allowing for actual experience.

Everyone has the power to heal themselves, to shift their thoughts and change how they feel about themselves and their lives. There are jewels and treasures to be found in even the most dire and depressing of lives lived, as I found out. I discovered that underneath all that old depression was the me I am today. The biggest thing I have learned over the years is that I have the power to change myself, within myself, all the time. Yes, I’ve had a lot of help, but it’s always been up to me to choose to do the work.

We all have the power to heal. This is what I have learned. This is what Jeanne taught me and has been teaching all of us through her messages over the past decade. This is what the Shamans and Buddhist practices that I have studied teach us. This is what the metaphysical healers teach us. This is what the powers of the mind, body, and spirit teach us when we open up to their full capabilities, to their full truths.

The power to heal spiritually, physically, mentally, and emotionally lies within. Try it and see what happens. And when recapitulation comes knocking, you’ll have some pretty good techniques already in place to use when the going gets tough. And always keep a hint of the positive in mind no matter what you have to encounter, remembering that eventually the going will be easier, much easier, joyously easier.

Here’s to healing,

Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Beware The Trickster

February 22, 2012 Jan Leave a comment

The Trickster is everywhere, waiting to draw us in. Even in moments of deep contemplation and worthy endeavor the Trickster may appear, throwing a mighty chink in the works of our deepest inner process. Today, I write one more story related to the day my aunt died, as it seems relevant to the message channeled from infinity on Monday: Show me Something.

As I have written of in several blogs over the past few weeks, my aunt’s dying was a process that spanned years. Together we had spoken of her death, read numerous books about the dying process together, and in her last few weeks spent many hours talking until she could do little more than utter a few words at a time. Finally, in full awareness, she set her intent. She was done with this life. She was ready. She asked me to be with her, to see her through the dying process.

I set out early in the morning to sit with her. On the drive to the hospital, I threw out a plea to the universe: “Please give me a sign,” I pleaded, “just one sign to show me what to do. I’ve never done this before. I’m nervous about being all that she needs me to be on this most important day.”

At the first stoplight I came to, I noticed a red and black bumper sticker on the car ahead of me. I inched closer, trying to read the small print. Here is what I read: Gandalf Murphy’s S……… Circus of Dreams. I couldn’t make out the word beginning with the letter S, but I was struck. Circus of Dreams! That must be meaningful, I thought.

At the next stoplight, I inched even closer, still trying to read the word beginning with the letter S. It’s then that I noticed the picture on the bumper sticker, a magician in a top hat, a big leer beneath a large curling mustache. A Trickster! Now I was wary, but I was still drawn to try and read the word beginning with the letter S. Could it be Sensational? Stupendous? What does all this mean? It must be significant or why else would I be so drawn to it?

There were no stoplights for a long stretch. “Focus on the road ahead,” I heard a voice say, “don’t get distracted.” Okay, but I still wondered what that word was that I couldn’t read clearly.

I came into Rhinebeck and stopped behind the same car at the light. Something told me, very firmly, not to look at the bumper sticker anymore. It wasn’t important. I turned my gaze to the left and then I got it. I spotted the Tibetan store and I knew that, indeed, I must not get distracted from the mission at hand.

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche, and the writings of Tulku Thondup are instrumental in my own evolutionary process and were major players in my aunt’s process of dying. We had been waiting for this day for a long time. Now I understood what the message of the bumper sticker was: Don’t let anything distract you from the mission of the day. Your aunt’s intent is all that matters. You will be fine. That bumper sticker is nothing compared to how much preparation you have already done for this moment in your life. Stay focused on the mission.

From that moment on I never glanced at the bumper sticker again. My eyes were focused on the road ahead of me, which turned into a tunnel without further distraction, leading me to whatever dream would unfold as the day progressed. I let myself become part of the transformational process that was already in progress without attachment to fear or self-consciousness. I arrived at my destination having fully detached from all that was going on in the world outside me. All that mattered was the intent of the day. I shrugged off everything except what my aunt asked of me: to become what she needed; an energetic presence guiding and guarding her own energy as she took her final breath and swam into the light.

In being open to the process of asking for guidance, in asking infinity to “Show me something!” as Monday’s message guides us to do, I was also confronted with correctly interpreting the message I received that day. Had I gotten caught in my endeavor to look too closely at the bumper sticker, any number of outcomes could have resulted. But as soon as I turned away, listening to another voice telling me to let it go, I clearly understood that nothing else mattered but the mission at hand.

The Trickster pulls us constantly away from the real mission at hand: to evolve, to rid ourselves of our attachments, our agendas, our angers and selfishness, to be fully open and present for others, so that their journeys may be smoothed by our true and selfless presence in their lives. This is what I strove for on that day when I drove to the hospital to be with my aunt. The mission was not only her smooth dying process, but also my own letting go to the process. And that is what happened, we both let go, she of this life in her body and me of my self-consciousness and fear.

As I went with the flow, aligning with her needs and intent, I became—without thought really—energetically available. That is what I believe we are all prompted to do every day, to learn how to flow through our lives, making choices that matter, dismissing what in not in alignment with our greater mission. That is what the message on Monday asked us to consider when it said: Challenge infinity and dare yourself to experience something that will lead you to greater understanding.

It takes baby steps. Oh, and learning to identify the Trickster and then reject its intent to usurp our energy. And remember: the Trickster is not human, but energy that wants what it wants for its own selfish purposes. Watch out how it comes into your life. Just as the good signs of guidance come in many forms, so does the Trickster. It can be very tricky just trying to figure out the message we are supposed to learn.

I never did read that last word on that bumper sticker that day. I let it go, until I thought about writing this blog. Through a little Internet research, I discovered that the bumper sticker referred to a band: Gandalf Murphy’s Slambovian Circus of Dreams. In knowing that, I see that it’s relevance to the mission of that day was exactly what I needed.

It let me know, in one sense, that I was about to enter my own dream world and to not get caught up in someone else’s. It let me know that nothing was as uniquely and magically attractive as the mission at hand. I was being asked to stay attuned, aligned with what I was being asked to do: to guide another human being through her last hours on earth, to see her through to new life. Isn’t that what we’re all here to do: see ourselves through to new life?

Thanks for reading. Here’s hoping my experiences of the Trickster help in the unfolding of everyday life, tricky or otherwise.

Jan

Messages from Jeanne

Readers of Infinity: Seek The Light With Intent

January 23, 2012 Jan Leave a comment

Look inward now, rather than outward. Turn constantly away from the distractions in the world and seek truth and right answers within, for all of you contain all knowledge within.

Lose self-importance as you turn inward and become humble channels of intent. Let the self go, releasing it from all that now pursues it, and allow pure light to shine into your heart and guide you.

Ask for the light to enter your darkness. Let it in. Peek at it in small glimpses if that is all you can handle, but begin to let it in. Know that this light is available to everyone. This light of truth seeks your awareness, but only as a guide to understanding and not as a self-aggrandizing presence.

Allow the simple and empty self to greet the light of knowledge, as you greet the light of each new day, with wonder and innocence. This is how you will find your way through your darkness. Face the light that shines within with wonder and innocence and allow it to guide you, today and every day. This is what is necessary now, for all human beings.

Use it like a flashlight, as you turn from the darkness and the tales of further darkness that are being shouted across the land and around the world. Look inward, and let the light of truth shine now. Then listen to it, feel it, let it be present within and eventually turn it outward, as you go into your day. Take the light always with you. Let it aid you, guide you, speak to you, and show you a new direction.

With light, shadows recede. In the light all is revealed. In the light you will see and know the truth of your pain and your delight equally. You will discover who you truly are and who you are truly meant to be as you continue growing.

Turn inward, face the darkness with the light you carry always with you. One seeks the other—light seeks darkness, darkness seeks light—this is how new life emerges. As you turn inward know that new life is ready to envelop you.

Do not be afraid of what the light reveals, for it only reveals what you must know about the self at this time. The light is the purifier, the gift of all infinity, the way of all change. Seek the light within and use it with daring, intent upon changing the self.

Today is the day to begin a new phase of growth. Today is the day a new light seeks to lighten the shadows within. Today is a day of insight, full of potential for growth. Today is a new day in your lives.

Begin this day with wonder and innocence. Be open and fair. Be calm, gentle, and aware that there is greater meaning yet to be discovered about the self, about others, and life itself. Look inward with a new light of innocence and, with the intent of discovering greater meaning, seek new life.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Intent, A Natural Solution

January 20, 2012 Chuck Leave a comment

A solution is reached when a problem is solved. Problems dissolve when a solvent is applied. Solvents break down barriers, divisions, and oppositions that result in a sense of unity and wholeness. This is known as resolution, or “re-solution” for the purposes of this blog.

The psyche is composed of many opposing parts, each with their separate points of view, separate needs, and separate desires. This is why, on some level, we are all bipolar beings, beings charged with the task of re-solving our polarities into a unified whole, what Jung called individuation.

Humans often ingest substances to re-solve the rigidities and polarities within the self that block unified action and fulfillment. A glass of wine might prove to be the dis-solving agent to loosen rigidity, relieve stress, quiet the mind, unleash vision, or allow us to open to the body and creativity, as we seek to transcend the wear and tear of daily life or the stilted energy of our deeply fragmented selves.

Wine is the highly celebrated fruit of Dionysus, the god of creativity and spontaneity. Wine is the transforming agent at the heart of the Christian mass. Wine is the agent that dissolves differences and takes us beyond our humanness. With it we commune with the gods. Of course, when we dry out, when the potion has run its course, we return to our humanness.

At the end of these journeys, however, the rigidities and polarities of our everyday lives return with a bad mood—a sobering moment to say the least. But, spiritual beings that we are, we long for the resolving qualities of dissolution again, a solution to solve our boredom and limitations, a solution to take us out—out of ourselves, beyond ourselves, or to feel fully free and whole within ourselves. We may find ourselves dependent on solutions, liquid or herbal, to solve our dilemmas.

The shamans of don Juan’s lineage recognized the power of these solvents. They realized that behind the solvents were entities that willingly catered to the desires of humans. The Ancient Shamans called these inorganic beings Allies, and they reveled in the belief that they could control these entities, who would reveal secrets like the fountain of youth to them. It was the contention of the New Seers of don Juan’s lineage, however, that this was the fatal flaw and downfall of those Ancient Shamans. The New Seers contended that the Ancients were duped into obtaining extraordinary powers in exchange for their attachment to these allies. In the shamanic world, this is the equivalent of addiction.

In the world of everyday life, we ingest all kinds of substances as we seek resolution to our problems, as we seek to achieve fulfillment and to transcend our human limitations. By our very nature we are consumers. We consume to solve and resolve our lives. From a shamanic point of view, this is a recipe for bondage, dependence upon substances that themselves consume the lion’s share of our lives.

The urge to seek resolution, wholeness, and transcendence is utterly healthy—it’s why we are here—and although it may be necessary to consume and engage the slippery slope of the inorganic world of allies, knowingly or unknowingly, there is a better solution: Engaging INTENT.

The shamans discovered Intent as an energetic wave that permeates the universe. We naturally engage intent to define our world. In our time, the mind has intervened to rationally limit our human potential. We engage intent largely to reinforce a known world and a known self. However, intent has the capability to open us up to the full realization of our true human potential, if we allow it to do so.

The mind, however, makes us nonbelievers, too shy to call out to intent, too impatient to allow it to unfold, too doubtful and judgmental to accept its path. In my experience, when we set an intent, simply by repeatedly intending it, it works its magic in the events, synchronicities, and encounters of our lives. Eventually, our intent is realized, though perhaps not as we might have expected.

In actuality, we constantly engage intent to create and reinforce the world we live in. We have become so entrenched in rigid definitions of a world of solid objects and unchanging self that we don’t believe anything else is possible and thus we limit our access to a greater world and greater solutions. We get caught in addictive behaviors as we turn to consuming solutions, seeking to gain temporary entrée into our hidden resources. Our access to intent and higher resolution, however, is limited by what we staunchly believe, what the mind rationally insists upon, and what the judgments of others reinforce.

We all have to encounter the inorganic world in our lives, we must all become consumers of one sort or another, but that world always exacts a toll in return for its gifts. Even as it asks us, “Are you really going to go down that path?” it entices us to do so, for its own energetic purposes.

The Ancient Shamans thought they could handle the power of the inorganic world, but the New Seers discovered that it was far more efficient to shift away from extraordinary powers in the human form and eternal life on earth to a new kind of freedom: no contracts, no attachments that could exact a toll on their energy, but instead total freedom to humbly continue without any special powers, other than that of engaging the pure power of intent on their continuing journeys in infinity.

When Carlos Castaneda got caught in the inorganic world of the Allies, don Juan, because he had refused to enter such worlds, didn’t know what to do. He turned to Carol Tiggs—another apprentice in Carlos’s group who had fully explored that world—and asked her to lead a mission to rescue Carlos. In this example, we are privy to don Juan’s process as he refused to break with his intent and be pulled into something that he knew was potentially harmful.

Once we set our intent, even if we forget that we have done so, the energetics of it are set in motion. This is not a rational process; it’s an energetic process. It defies logic, it defies rationality, it defies the belief system of the mind. It is not connected to effort, will, goodness or badness—the constructs of change ordained by the mind. It does not involve hidden contracts to arrive at its solution. It’s part of our inheritance, our natural endowment, if we can allow ourselves to engage this most natural solution, with unbending intent.

It is truly an energy thing! Just do it, as the shamans do, and literally call it to your changing self.

INTENT!!!
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Shifts of the Assemblage Point

November 18, 2011 Chuck Leave a comment

For the first time in ten years I decided to truly stalk the role of student. I’d selected an advanced seminar in Stamford, CT. My intent for the weekend was to clear the way for learning, to remove all the filters of identity and judgment that don’t allow for something new, that keep us frozen in the familiar.

I was driving a rental car with Rhode Island plates, our own car still in the body shop since a recent fender bender. I had a new trac phone with an unmemorized number. I arrived at my destination with the hope that I would know no one and that I would share nothing unnecessary about myself that might freeze me in an old identity or tug at my self-importance. “I’m simply a therapist here to learn.”

After parking my car a woman approached me on the walk to the college, obviously headed to the same seminar. After some smalltalk about the weather she asked me where I was from. I went to tell her, but drew a complete blank. I stumbled, slightly embarrassed, but actually quite fascinated. No matter how hard I tried, I had no idea where I was from!

I knew my name was Chuck Ketchel, as I easily picked out my name tag at the registration desk, but for several minutes I couldn’t swim my way back to the surface of Red Hook, NY. The best I could laughingly say to her, finally, was that I was from the Hudson Valley. She smiled and disappeared. I didn’t see her again for the duration of the seminar. Or, if I did, I didn’t recognize her.

My experience in the training was magical: I learned, my intent fully realized. Don’t have concerns about early Alzheimer’s for Chuck! This was a shamanic move—what the shamans would call using INTENT to STALK a different position of the assemblage point.

For the shamans of Carlos Castaneda’s lineage, the assemblage point refers to a point on our energetic body where the energy fields that impact us are assembled. This assemblage of energy becomes our description of reality, how we see and define the world we live in.

When the assemblage point moves to a different position on our energy body, new energy fields are assembled and with that we experience a new world. A new world can mean something as simple as achieving a new perspective on life or as drastic a perception as encountering strange entities in a never-before experienced world.

Engaging intent, as I did when approaching this seminar, is one way to shift the assemblage point. My intent to leave my old world behind, suspend judgment, and simply learn something new, shifted me and I became a stalker. In shamanic terms, stalking is maintaining the ability to calm the self and hold together when confronted with an unfamiliar reality.

Every time we recapitulate, we shift the assemblage point to a world of prior experience. When we dream, the assemblage point moves freely, allowing for experiences in many worlds, particularly outside the body. Many jolts in ordinary life can move our assemblage point as well, including traumatic incidences and subsequent flashbacks.

The other night, my daughter startled me awake with a phone call and a frightened voice, which she has given me permission to describe.

“Dad, I’m so upset! I feel so homesick,” she said. “I just watched a movie with Joel—Faces in the Crowd—about a woman who suffers from face blindness. Suddenly I looked at Joel and I didn’t recognize him! I didn’t want him to touch me. It was really freaky. I knew who he was and yet I didn’t! I feel in my body like I have at other times. I might be at a supermarket on the deli line when suddenly the voices around me seem very loud and my body becomes very light, like I’m disappearing.”

I assured Erica that these are normal events and that at such times we are being challenged to experience different worlds. Her experience describes that of being at the gates between worlds when energetically vibratory experiences and unfamiliarity reign and we might experience faintness, nausea, buzzing, fear, and a longing for home.

In these states, infinity is beckoning to us. As the shamans say, we are experiencing a shift in the assemblage point, asked to assemble and enter a new world with a consistency of awareness far more heightened than normal. At such times we are challenged to hold onto awareness in two worlds at once, to not forget who we are, but to take in the far vaster knowledge that we are presented with as reality shifts. We are challenged to remain present and aware while we allow ourselves to have the experience of being infinite beings and take in the truth who we really are, where we’ve been, and where we are going.

The other night, while Jan was in trance—a shift of the assemblage point—I asked her to go to the place she was in just before she was conceived in this life. Her awareness took her to a vast ocean, accompanied by the sound of deep breaths, long inhales and long exhales, in concert with the amplitude and rhythm of the gently rocking waves of this unending ocean. She sensed her awareness shifting to a dark, contained space as I asked her to move on to conception, where a more constricted breath ensued.

Jan’s experience—her shift in her assemblage point to the vast sea of awareness before the stalking of a new life, that is, an identity to be constructed by the circumstances she was born into—reveals the true holographic nature of reality. No matter how many pieces you cut a holographic image into, under the right lighting conditions the original whole is revealed. Everyone of us is part of the same hologram—we all belong to the same vast sea of awareness.

When we enter this world, our awareness shifts from sea to container. We become a definite thing, born out of an infinite sea of interconnected possibility. And when we become that definite being, we forget our vast roots, our previously infinite lives.

Our task in this life is to solve the riddle—the specific challenges of the life we are in—and then to go beyond and recover all our truths, all of ourselves, and truly find our way home, back to awareness of the vastness of it all. This is the true essence of homesickness of which my daughter spoke. But oh, how we want to cling to the comfort of unchanging familiarity and the security of home in this life!

Shifts of the assemblage point, promptings from infinity to awaken to our true fullness, are rampant in our time. The familiar world is rattling us daily, as new worlds are finally being allowed to become known. We live in an exceptional time for mass evolutionary advancement, as the world continually bombards the fixation of our assemblage points, prompting them to move, and jolting us to awaken to a new reality as well.

As much as it may assault our senses, our feelings, and our sense of safety, we can now hear the words: “anal intercourse in the showers of Penn State between a coach and a child.” This is a real world that exists, spanning way beyond the walls of Penn State. The truth of that hidden world, with all its discomforts, is now a world we can know exists. We can live with the truth of that world. We can stalk that position of the assemblage point. By allowing ourselves to know and validate the truth of that world we can change, and indeed change the world we live in.

However, the process of allowing the truths of other worlds to be let in—shifts of the assemblage point—is indeed unsettling. Reactions range from nausea, dizziness, sadness, fear, homesickness, vibratory energy states, to yes, actually forgetting where you come from!

These are all transitory states. The real challenge is to achieve cohesion when you find yourself in another world. That is: calm yourself, recognize and actually be in awe of the experience while maintaining a dual focus.

As I stood in the lobby of the University of Connecticut last weekend—a man with no home—I knew who I was. I knew I had a foot in this world. I knew I’d return to it when the seminar was over. But, I especially knew that I was on an adventure to learn something very important—and that I did! We always do if we allow ourselves, or intend ourselves, into new or old worlds of discovery, what the shamans call shifts in the position of the assemblage point.

Chuck, from ???

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