Is it really true that you reap what you sow? A good seed planted in good soil has the potential to reap good while a bad seed planted in bad soil may not bloom at all, but such wisdom is faulty, for everyone knows that the best seed and the best soil still may produce bad plants and even the poorest seed planted in the poorest soil has the potential to blossom. All seeds have good and bad qualities, all soil too. No one is immune from their karmic duty and so do not ponder too long the mistakes made in planting and preparing the soil but look to what results and offer it its own potential. Let it reach for the sky or deep into the ground, let it settle or scatter as it will, for all living things have their path and who knows what that will be except in the living of it. Fate is not destiny, it is merely the beginning.
Supportive mantra: I will not work your karma, I will only work my own.
Karma: The work to be done, the issue to solve, the mission of this lifetime.
Facing the truth of the path that lies before us… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
We are all, at some time in our lives, faced with having to admit that something just isn’t working for us anymore. At such times we might get angry. We might become sad. We might become defiant, or we might simply give up. But the truth is that when something is not working for us anymore we are being asked to face a truth about ourselves, about our life, and about our future. We are being asked to change something and the decision we make is crucial to what comes next.
Sometimes we might have to act on the behalf of another person, and this too puts us in a unique position. Robert Monroe—documented out-of-body traveler, founder of the Monroe Institute and the developer of Hemi-Sync audio technique—described, during an out-of-body experience, being in a position to have to make a decision on behalf of another living creature, in this case, a dog.
Here is the story: He and the dog are the best of companions. They are taking a walk when the dog, running after a rabbit, is struck by a truck. Monroe assesses the situation. The dog is obviously beyond recovery. In order to alleviate his suffering, Monroe takes responsibility and acts quickly. Soaking his shirt in gasoline from the gas tank of the truck that struck the dog, Monroe places the gasoline soaked shirt over the dog’s mouth and with the most tender and caring embrace helps his dear dog go.
Coming out of the OBE, Monroe learns from his teachers that at another time in his life he would have been swept up in such emotional turmoil that he would not have been able to act as quickly and wisely toward his dying dog. He would have clung to him, but it would have been to the detriment of the dog’s spirit, for the truth was that the dog was dying and overpowering emotional attachment would have offered nothing of substance to the situation. At the time of this OBE, however, Monroe had advanced to a place of utter detachment. He had control over his emotions and could focus his energy where it needed to go. Without pity, but only filled with love, he could do what his doggy friend needed him to do.
Sometimes it’s time to let people, pets, things, behaviors and habits go, as succinctly and with as much love and kindness as Monroe administered to his dying dog. They’d had a good life together, but without regret, and without blaming the truck driver for striking the dog—for he knew there was no cause to fault him—Monroe acted in alignment with the truth of what had occurred. He was so emotionally detached that within seconds was able to read the entire scene. His role was clear. He was there to administer impersonal loving kindness and compassion; a karmic duty was performed.
Our own evolutionary process prepares us, through each lifetime, as we train ourselves to take responsibility, gain control over our emotions, and focus our energy, just as Monroe did, to get to the point where we are able to face the truths of a certain situation without attachment or blame.
Wise knowing comes when we are ready to act upon it… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Sometimes we are called to action unwillingly; we don’t really want to, but we feel obligated. Sometimes we are ready to jump in when asked. Sometimes things are thrust upon us suddenly, as in Monroe’s case. On the day he took his dog for a walk he had no idea he would be called upon to do what he did. Such are the moments when we realize our true spiritual state, when our evolutionary progress is made clear.
The question is: Will we be ready, when called upon, to do the thing that is right for all involved, with only goodness in our heart, without attachment, need, dependency, but simply because it is the right thing? Will we be able to transcend the personal and let go?
“Letting go” can take many forms, depending on our lives, how we’ve created them, and how ready we are to change and allow for new life, whether a new phase of life on earth, or acquiescence to the death of the physical body. Letting go is allowing for change that is right to actually take place, changing us in the process.
In the end, we must all take responsibility for ourselves, for our decisions and our actions; if we don’t or can’t then things will be imposed on us. And so it is imperative that we practice taking control of our own letting go now, in full consciousness, not letting even the letting go overpower us, but riding through it with as much grace and love as Monroe did when he realized it was time to let his dog go.
Part of our karmic process now involves letting go of that which no longer serves us, be it old habits or behaviors, attachments, loves, fears, dislikes, resentments; even our physical prowess must go at some point. The list goes on. We all have something to let go of, as we are all challenged to free ourselves to move on into greater life every day. Can we take full responsibility for every aspect of our lives and move on without burdening, blaming or becoming a victim?
The difficulties we face when we are involved in the lives of other adult beings is that we cannot control or really ask anything of them. Ultimately, every decision, choice and action is up to them. We might see very clearly that they are in a critical situation, being foolhardy, putting their lives at risk or burdening others with their behaviors, and although we might see that there is no time like the present to give advice, the truth is that we really do have to let our own expectations go and allow others to take their own journeys, keeping in mind the lesson that Monroe learned from his teachers, that during another lifetime he had not been so advanced. We are all living the life we are living in order to learn a crucial karmic lesson, even those who frustrate us the most!
What tomorrow may bring we don’t really know, but we can prepare now… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
People will do what people will do, but at the same time if we are called upon to assist we must state the truths as we see them and ask the other being to take full responsibility for decisions made.
We can offer help and guidance, but ultimately we have to step back and let nature take its course, including the nature inside another being. That kind of letting go is as poignant and caring as Monroe’s action on behalf of his dying dog, and learning to let go in such a manner is a sign of true compassion.
Who are we to know the truth behind someone else’s karma? We can only guess. Unless it is our own karmic journey, we only have the outer truth available to us, and that may be very clear to us, though not at all to the other being. At such times, our only recourse may be to administer love, kindness, and compassion, and without attachment send that other being on their journey, into new life in whatever form that will take.
Sometimes love is enough, Jan
The episode with the dog is described in Robert Monroe’s book, Far Journeys.
That dang bee would not leave us alone! – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Mercury Retrograde. Some people, when they hear that term, are immediately suspect, wary, and prone to morose depression. Mercury Retrograde means trouble!
Mechanical failures are rampant. The iPad won’t connect to the wifi. The car won’t start. A computer failure occurs. Bothersome memories flare up. Things left undone surface in gnarly and annoying ways.
On the other hand, I see Mercury Retrograde as a time of opportunity, offering very succinct and direct guidance on just what needs to be done right now! It is a time to complete unfinished business so that we can move on into new life. If we don’t do it we will never fully be able to move on.
That which we don’t complete remains attached forever; it WILL come back to haunt us. Why put ourselves into such a compromising position?
Retrogrades also offer us the opportunity to confront and discover our karmic challenges. Our karmic challenges, like unfinished business, return often throughout life, asking us to deal with them once and for all. To face, solve and resolve our issues is the only way we will be able to freely move on into new life, both in present reality and when we die and enter the bardos.
Will this be the life that we move on up the astral ladder? Or will we reincarnate into another life, playing out the same issues once again? It’s a choice we make during each lifetime, evolving a little more, completing a few more karmic issues each time. By the time we’ve lived several thousand lives, however, wouldn’t it be nice to go on to something entirely new?
Something is not quite clear… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
So, with another week of this current Mercury Retrograde still to go, I suggest taking a good look at what has been happening in your life to challenge you. Perhaps the failure of mechanical devices means you should not be using them; perhaps your addiction to your iPhone or Facebook is being challenged.
Perhaps your recapitulation is pushing you to go deeper as it brings up memories. Perhaps your body is telling you to take better care of it as it pains you or shows you some weakness. Perhaps your insistence on doing things your way and them not working out means you should relax and flow better with life. Perhaps old legal issues finding you many months or years later are letting you know they will not go away; that it’s time to finally deal with them.
To face what comes with maturity, to quickly respond, clears the air, clears the mind, clears the body to be ready for what comes next. Retrograde is a great time to learn the importance of taking care of daily business so that it does not follow you beyond its “sell by” date.
If we learn to deal with what comes, when it comes, we have learned one of the great lessons in life: We are only free of something when we take the time to attend to and fully complete what life challenges us with. If something is done right the first time, we will not have to do it again. And that is a karmic lesson too.
So, retrogrades offer us the opportunity to face something about ourselves and clear not only our issues but also to erase some of our karma, which is really the business, the work, of this life. Rather than continuing to sweep things under the bed, it’s time to take out the vacuum cleaner!
With a little work all will be revealed… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
And just so you have something to look forward to, this Mercury Retrograde, which is all about our personal issues, is being followed by a Venus Retrograde in late July, which will be all about our relationship issues.
And so, fresh opportunities for getting those relationships in good form are about to hit! Good Luck with that! But first finish the old business that is popping up now, so that you are free to fully experience what Venus has in mind for you!
“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.” So said the Persian poet and mystic Kahlil Gibran in his book The Prophet.
All children must take the karmic journey… – Art by Jan Ketchel
When I first read the above words as a teenager I was so happy, suddenly I was free. For the first time in my life I was given the answer to what I had always felt, that I did not belong to my parents and they did not own me. It was all I needed as I was soon to step out into the world as an independent being. In a sense I was discovering that we are all orphans, all adopted, with no real personal connection or background in this world, as the real work of our lives lies elsewhere, and that is what I discuss in this blog.
We are all born into this world and this life to work on our karmic issues, to resolve what we have not yet resolved through our many lives. Life itself gives us everything we need in order to do this. For those who have children of their own this idea can be both challenging and consoling. But for all of us, it means that we are all here, in Earth School, for our own karmic reasons.
We all come as infants, we all grow up and experience life, and we all leave when we die. That is the shared journey we all take, though the details of our individual lives vary greatly. What is left behind when we leave is the essence of who we were, the energy we expended during our lifetime, positive and negative, effecting the Earth and the energy of this world. In addition, if we have not fully resolved our karmic issues, the residue of those issues remain with us to be taken up again in a new life.
So, if we are all here for personal karmic reasons, we are all here for the same purpose. Can we find a way to accept all beings, just as we too wish to be accepted? Can we let go of attachment to and judgment of others and let them work on their karmic issues while we too work on ours? Can we do these things with compassion? These are some of our challenges as we live our lives, as we raise our children, as we care for our pets (for they too are connected to us for their own karmic reasons), as we struggle to make sense of who we are and why we are here.
Just what kinds of karmic issues do we face? That’s a good question, and it’s one that deserves our attention. It’s a far better question to ponder than the “why me” question, or the “how come I didn’t get” complaint, or the “poor me” mantra. If we are to really evolve it’s time for us to take on our personal issues with a little deliberateness, to get beyond thinking that our lives are sad and meaningless, or that we only live once and then we die, and focus on our karmic challenges because, really, our eternal life depends on it, as does the eternal life of the planet.
Parents are confronted not only with allowing themselves to take their own karmic journeys but to let their children do the same. Every child is here to work out their personal karma and each parent is here to do the same. Remember: we were all children once too. No one is the cause of, or responsible for, anyone else’s karma. We are not responsible for setting up the conditions of anyone else’s karma either, though we are all players in each others’ cosmic dance and drama as we live out our lives together.
This deer is on her own karmic journey. Her hooves indicate that she is sick… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Eliminating the guilt for being a bad parent may be the parent’s karma, but the parent is still not responsible for the child’s karma. The parent has only helped deliver the child to their own karma. The parent must let the child go at the appropriate age for them to discover and work out their own karmic issues. The parent is then freed to work out their own. Whether an actual parent or not in this lifetime, all of these issues nonetheless apply to all the people who dance with us throughout our lives.
Gibran offers further advice as we undergo this karmic/cosmic dance. He says this of our children: “You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.”
We know the road is rough, for we too are traveling along it, day by day, attempting to remain focused on the imperative of our own spirit. No matter how cleared we think we have become there will always be a new challenge to tease and test us. As we advance we make decisions in how and where we wish to use our energy, whether to save our energy for our inner work or to continue to challenge ourselves with the enticements of this world. It’s always a choice.
Our true personal karmic journey is really a lesson in learning that we are not that important, that there is something far beyond this life and our human self on this planet that we are here to discover and reconnect with. Completion of our karmic issue involves fully living out our lives in this world—fully experiencing everything that life has to offer, so that we are in a position to leave it without attachment—learning what it means to lose our self-importance in the process. When we’ve done that we’re ready to graduate from Earth School!
In actually doing the work of our personal karmic issues we become naturally more compassionate toward others, toward the struggles we see them caught in, for the behaviors we see repeated, for the unawakened spirits that we all come into this realm as. We naturally see ourselves mirrored in the struggles of others.
As compassionate beings, we learn that we cannot change another being or make them take another road than the one they’ve karmically chosen, that everyone must take the journey they are on. Even as we have had to wake up to our karmic journey, so is the challenge the same for everyone. We are not present in other’s lives to alleviate, travel another’s path, or change the journey that must be faced, but to travel our own path and support when support is appropriate or warranted. Sometimes such support is the decision to give no support at all, to totally withdraw because our support only offers a detrimental crutch.
Sometimes the journey is clear and at other times it blurs before us, but it is still our path to take… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Sometimes we may wish to offer advice but are soundly rejected, and that is a sign to step back and wait. As people face their issues, clarity will come. We simply have to look at ourselves, at our own journeys to know that many days we too could not face our issues, could not accept advice, could not get beyond our self-pity, could not forgive or get beyond our own resentment. We remember that our maturity has taken time, continues to be challenging, and that we are still learning too.
As parents must send their children off onto their own journeys, so must we all send ourselves on our own. As Gibran says in one of the final stanzas of his poem On Children: “You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.” We have all been launched into this world to take our karmic journeys, and we all have the potential to go far. The path before us all is the path to eternal, conscious life in infinity.
We are all beings on journeys of karmic encounter, with the possibility to wake up and change at any time. Perhaps the challenge will begin in this lifetime. Or perhaps it will be in another. Keep in mind, however, that each life is an advancement along the karmic route. Everyone, in each lifetime, evolves another step along the road, and the planet evolves a little bit more too!
Everything is interwoven, in a preordained and orderly karmic set up… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
I sleep badly, waking every hour. I feel encroaching powerful energy, the approach of rain too, moisture in the air, my sinuses stuffy. Each time I wake a new worry enters my mind and spins a sticky web. I get caught in the web, drift back to sleep and try to get out of it, but sticky web that it is I am its prey. Unwilling to let it have me for very long I wake again. Now a new worry sneaks up and attacks. Once again I am taken back down into the slumber of a new tormentor.
Each hour that I wake up I tell myself to cut it out, to stop worrying. You are aware that worry is futile, I tell myself, useless and unhelpful. Why are you doing it? Stop it! But when the next hour comes around I find myself there again, attaching to whatever comes into my mind, easy prey to the worry monster.
I do Netting, the clearing technique that came to me in a meditation a few weeks ago and which I recently wrote about. I sweep myself over and over again with my imaginary net. I even concentrate on my head, the brain that spins its worry tales, sweeping the net back and forth quickly between my neck and head, flicking out my catch quickly and decisively, but to no avail. I just cannot seem to extricate myself from the worry web I have landed in.
My Dreaming Self finally comes to my aid. It tells me to remember that I am on my own journey and that everything I encounter is important and necessary for me to encounter. It reminds me that it is the same for everyone else, that I cannot alleviate the pain of someone else’s journey. It reminds me that no matter how many times I might advise another person, my advice will not make a dent unless the person is actually ready to receive it, and by that point they won’t need it because they will already be there, doing it for themselves. And so, my Dreaming Self tells me, let your worries go because they are useless thoughts with no impact except to drain your energy.
Our karmic journey is intricately laid out, with a burning desire to be resolved… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
And then my Dreaming Self reminds me that everything I experience in my life and everything I have lived through was set up a long time ago. This is the same for everyone, my Dreaming Self reminds me. Parents are just vehicles for life, channels through which life comes into this world. They do not really matter, for in truth they have nothing to do with the Soul’s journey, with the karma that each being must live out in its life in this world.
I know this is true for my own journey, that my parents, though my vehicles into this life did not really provide me with any issues that I did not already have planned for this life. I learned this as I took my recapitulation journey and in the journey since those intense years of inner work.
My life and all the issues in it, down to the minutest details, were set up by my High Self, the being that I am through each lifetime, the being that I evolve closer and closer to in each lifetime, the being that I am becoming. This is the being that comes to me as I dream, that tells me these kinds of things. That High Self reminds me that we are all on our separate journeys, to not blame or resent any aspect of the lives we live because, she/he tells me, we chose it all!
And further more, my Dreaming/High Self reminds me, you must get to a place of letting everyone you are connected to live out their own karma, their own lives in the way that they are meant to. Your only recourse of help is really only energetic, until the time comes when you are shown otherwise.
When others are ready they will show up and ask for help, real help, and then you will know what to do for them and how to do it. Until then they must suffer, just as you have had to suffer. All must suffer. That is the karma of life on earth, suffering until no more suffering is necessary, until the lessons of karma are learned.
And so, my Dreaming/High Self admonishes, use your energy wisely, not in worry but in energetic endeavors, in sending good, positive healing energy to all you are connected with. Without judgment or intent other than pure good energy to aid the karmic journey, send this energy from the heart. Not from the worrisome head, but only from the place of love, kindness, and compassion. Devoid of manipulation and with no personal gain or need, send this pure energy out into the world. If sent in the right unselfish way it will have a positive effect.
This is the most powerful stuff on earth, this energy of love. Envision it hitting the mark. Envision the receiver taking it in to their own heart and being enlightened by it in whatever way is meaningful to them at this moment in their lives. And then envision them taking the steps that will aid them on their journey, to face their karmic debt and evolve beyond it. Keep in mind that even baby steps are an acknowledgement of such powerful energy, as just reaching someone stuck in karmic mud is quite a feat!
It’s all about making an energetic connection… – Art by Jan Ketchel
This, my Dreaming and my High Self tell me, is how they communicate with me! It’s all done energetically. Just like electrical currents it courses through the universe and arrives in my body through my own heart, through my own yearning for connection, for healing, for enlightenment. This is what we are all seeking and waiting for. This is what we are all connected to; the electric buzz of connection to our Higher Self who knows all.
It’s not really that hard to do. And don’t forget to do it for the self: Be open. Wait. Receive. And then give in the same way to others, to those you love, to those you hate, to those you resent, to those you worry about. Bring the energy down to the center of your heart chakra, feel its glow, and use it for the greater good of the self, other, and the world. As my Dreaming/High Self tell me, this is what it’s really all about.
