Tag Archives: life as a journey

Soulbyte for Monday October 9, 2023

-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

Don’t get caught in useless arguments that won’t further your spirit’s journey. Where does your purpose lie? Not in the mundane, nor in the banalities of competition or ego but in the depths of your Soul. Purpose is directly related to the life you are in. There is nothing more important than the life you are in and the unfolding of each moment of each day, the only mundanities to pay attention to, for it is in your daily life that your purpose is spelled out for you. What is going on inside you that keeps you from your purpose? Is it fear? Anger? Resentment? Can you let all that go and just be with your pure and innocent self? For that is where your truth and your purpose lie, with your pure and innocent self, who is just waiting to explain it all to you. There is no argument, fear or resentment there. There is only truth.

Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Soulbyte for Thursday October 5, 2023

-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

Return to a sense of knowing that you fully belong to the world, a sense of knowing that you may not remember but that you did once feel upon entering into this life. At that time you knew more than you know now. Gather your knowledge of your early beginnings and set yourself once again upon a path of newness, the path that once belonged to you and still does. Reassert your presence. Take a stand that is full of heart. Take a step in the direction of your choice and claim your spot in the universe that you call life. It is ready for you.

Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Soulbyte for Monday October 2, 2023

-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

Greet each new day without regret for what has already passed. Find newness each dawn and the opportunity to make new pathways in a new direction. Without regret find your feet on solid ground and forge ahead with an open mind, an open heart, receptive to that which approaches. Opportunities await, but you will miss them if your mind is closed by regret, if your thoughts are stuck in the past and if your receptivity is not turned on. Mind your manners but stay alert and alive to what awaits!

Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Chuck’s Place: Stepping Up The Infinite Ladder Of Love

Plant your love wherever you go…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

I, like all of us, have been challenged in this life to ascend another rung on the infinite ladder of love. I call that ladder infinite because love forever broadens as it rises to embrace the infinitude of all.

The challenge of reopening to love, once you’ve experienced love, as we all have, regardless of its level of fulfillment, is to grow that love forward. Love can only build upon the plateau of love you have already accrued.

We accrue love in many of our relationships in life, be they with humans, animals or trees. Letting go of a physical relationship can never erase the fact of that love, regardless of its ending in the materiality of this plane of life.

If you are to love again, you must include all the love you have ever experienced as the foundation for new love. However, that growing love must be separated from attachment to the nostalgic familiarity of forms and habits already lived. Love cannot grow if it remains tethered to a past life. And yes, one can have many lives in one physical life.

A sense of undying loyalty to a relationship that has physically ended binds love’s evolution and hinders maturity into new life. Successful mourning ultimately frees everyone to continue their journey into new possibilities. Allowing oneself to be vulnerable in a new encounter, while knowing through experience the disappointments of failures or missed opportunities in love, is a major growth point.

Jeanne and I had a contract in our earthly marriage that insisted we never impede each other’s growth. As our wedding song honestly stated, “our love will grow for all we know.” Vows simply do not guarantee that love will grow. If it’s not right, love insists you set each other free. It’s the truly loving thing to do.

We launched that contract to new levels when Jeanne left this world. She has since been an impeccable warrior; and she has almost completely refused to grant me a moment of familiar connection to our once-treasured earthly existence.

Our love grows now on the premise that we independently assume total  responsibility for our lives and exercise total freedom in the different planes of existence that we currently reside upon. For Jeanne, that is life in the formless plane; for myself, it remains the continued life in physical form.

Of course, I must admit that Jeanne is a magical trickster, whose maneuvers upon the earthly plane have offered me enormous growth opportunities. But these gifts always come with the insistence that I assume total responsibility for the decision to live and realize the possibility in the seed of the offering. Our loved ones in infinity often challenge us to evolve in ways we’d prefer to avoid.

Jeanne was instrumental to the possibility that I might grow love forward in my relationship with Jan. To achieve this, I needed to fully embrace the love I’d accrued with Jeanne but then totally take it into new frontiers with Jan, completely detached from Jeanne in a personal sense. Yet that growing love is fully given to all, as we mature into beings who love with equanimity.

Jeanne, Jan and I are fully aware that we are part of the same soul group, whose goal—similar to the goals of all soul groups—is for all its members to fully master their individual challenges so that their group, as a whole, can ascend the infinite ladder of love.

Ultimately, there is only one soul group, the soul group of infinite Oneness. Ultimately, all soul groups will merge into that Oneness. An analogy would be the human body, which consists of countless soul groups, such as the soul groups of the liver, the heart, the kidneys, etc. All these distinct organ soul groups ultimately merge into the oneness of a human body.

I would venture to assert that all lives that currently reside upon this Earth plane are members of the same soul group. Yes, I concede that within that group are smaller more intimately connected groups, but we are all extant at this time to both challenge and support each other to advance the Earth dream we all reside in, to rise another rung on the infinite ladder of love. Clearly, to love is the only way to keep that dream alive.

Each of us have the opportunity to ascend the infinite ladder of love in this life. It begins with releasing attachment to the past life of our family  of origin. While cherishing its memory and foundation in love, we allow all the members of our nuclear soul group family to shed their previous forms, as they grow their individual lives forward, whether it be upon a plane of form or a plane of formlessness.

Perhaps most significantly, we must allow our evolving selves to molt, to shed the skins of completed life, in the form of attachment to old ideas of self, and to be fully present to new possibility, as we bring life and love to the unlived sides of our soul’s potential.

To love the many lives of self through the developmental stages of this life, as well as all the people with whom we’ve shared those lives, while at the same time releasing all to their new lives, is the foundation to build new love upon, as we take another step upon the infinite ladder of love.

Love is all around you,
Come on and let it grow,

Chuck

Soulbyte for Monday September 25, 2023

-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

You might find yourself wondering how you got where you are today. It’s one thing to wake up one day and discover that life has passed you by but it’s another thing to take full responsibility for the fact that you were never fully present enough in life to catch all of its important moments. Sometimes things get missed, but there is always an opportunity to wake up and grab each moment’s experience in full consciousness, to have life at its best, and to fully have the human experience. It’s never too late.

Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne