Tag Archives: life

Messages from Jeanne

#765 Set Your Intent

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Written by Jan Ketchel with a channeled message from Jeanne Ketchel.

Today, I asked Jeanne for a message of guidance as we begin a new week. Here is what she offers us all:

My Dear Ones:

Do not be thwarted by the interferences that may appear as blockages in your paths—they are mere hurtles to be leapt over, mere lessons to quickly assess and move on from. If you find yourself stumbling along, unable to gain clarity, I ask that you point your radar innerly and question the self most directly, asking why. For it is only in asking the self to take full responsibility for all actions and decisions in life that you will evolve into an emerging being of light and energy, ready for the next journey. In finding the self open to life and its vicissitudes as a path of learning and higher evolutionary potential, you offer yourself the way to truth.

Do not shirk your responsibilities in life. Take care of those who need you and depend on you. Guide them, protect them, educate and teach them when necessary and appropriate, but do not force an agenda nor do their lessons for them. All must learn even as you have had to learn.

Some students of life are reluctant, refusing the greater calling, but that is not your problem. You can only be an appropriate teacher to such recalcitrant ones by your own example of living harmoniously, flowing with what comes to greet you each day, accepting your direction, taking responsibility and keeping yourself always in tiptop inner shape. By that I mean: keep your own inner process alight. Fan the flames of your inner work so that they never die, no matter what comes from outside to thwart you from your intentions.

On this day, I suggest that you set your intent for yourself and that you abide by the terms of your spiritual and life path as you desire, but also working with what comes to you each moment of the day. All may not go as you wish, but wait and see, for in the end your intent will rule. How that happens is the mystery and beauty of life. Learn from this day and walk on into your week stronger, both innerly and in the world you live in.

You are all on a journey of enlightenment. You are all prepared well. Everything you need is with you already. You are not alone and you will not fail.

Accept yourself as your own guide and life as your teacher. Pupil and master together, walk now onward into a new day. Every minute of your life is open and waiting for you to greet it.

Take this with you as you go into your day:

You are expected. The world awaits you. Greet it with openness as it also greets you. You are exactly where you should be. Happiness is in your heart and in your hands. Open both and you will discover that they work quite well together if you allow them to be your guides. Look at your hands now and ask them to hold your heart gently and kindly today as you venture on your day’s journey.

Here is a prayer to the Self:

Take me on my journey with gentleness and humility.
Carry me where I need to go.
I take full responsibility for myself.
My life awaits me.
I am open and awaiting it as well.
I go now into my life with openness and joy.

I am alive.
I am grateful.
I am faithful to my self and my journey.
I love myself for the lessons in my life,
as they lead to my own higher Self.
This I accept.

I am one.
I am whole.
I am all that.
Today my life begins anew.

Most humbly offered and with thanks to Jeanne.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: A Very Magical Time

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It’s been a little challenging lately to detach from all the political hoopla and hype, all the name-calling, finger pointing, joking, judging, and ugliness going on. In an effort to go into deeper solitude I’ve decided not to post what I consider apropos articles and blogs, even though they may certainly contain messages in alignment with what Chuck, Jeanne, and I regularly write about, because I find that my energy tends to stay stuck on them. Instead, I’m weaning myself off my usual checking-of-what’s-happening-in-the-media morning routine. Often just a quick fix—”Just to see what’s happening!”—I’ve decided to remove all the links from my bookmarks bar and stay away. Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! There they go! I just removed myself from the Internet. It’s so easy and really so freeing! From this day forward I am not doing, as the shamans say.

Not Doing what I normally do allows for experiencing everything differently, even if ever so slightly. My intent now can focus on what’s most important to me personally rather than on what is being thrown in my face according to someone else’s intent, greed, passion, fixation, penchant or desire. No longer bombarded by ads, pop-up windows, moving icons, and numerous other distractions, I can stay focused on nature—the magic of real nature—inside myself and right outside my window.

As I experience the early morning hours, before most people are out of bed, I offer myself the opportunity to connect directly with nature’s process. I stir when the birds stir. I listen to their morning chatter, the darkness of the night gently moving aside as the sky begins to lighten in the East and I’m happy to be alive, right then, at that moment. It’s a special time. Just waking from dreams, I’m often still connected to other possibilities. Still softened by the night, I don’t immediately jump to thoughts, but let my senses, my intuition, my spirit speak to me. It’s a magical time.

The opportunities to do something personally desirable and fitting are fully available at 4:30 a.m. I can meditate, channel, pray, write in my journal, jot down my dreams, or simply stand on the deck and watch the birds, the deer, smell the dew, catch glimpses of the last stars and breathe in the cool morning air. It’s a magical time.

As I continue working on the final draft of my book, The Recapitulation Diaries: The Man in the Woods—the first of three volumes—I’m struck by how intensely healing it is to be able to squarely face our traumas, to relive them, and excise them from our bodies, minds, psyches and spirits. In so doing, we offer ourselves the opportunity to return to a natural state of being, or perhaps even for the first time to experience what it means to be calm and contented enough to feel present in this world. It was all I ever yearned for, to feel like I really belonged here and to find out why I existed. I could not have achieved the place of calmness I now inhabit had I not challenged myself to go on a journey of a lifetime: into myself. In fact, I am certain I would be dead, eaten away by the stuff that festered inside me.

Electing to take a recapitulation journey was perhaps the greatest conscious challenge of my lifetime, which led to my discovering that I was indeed opening up to a journey of magical proportions. My experiences, as I took that journey, unfolded most naturally, as I relinquished my hold on the things that I had always counted on, much as I did today in excising the media links from my web browser. As I took that recapitulation journey I had to turn my back on a lot of crutches, habits, behaviors, safety measures, and even relationships, that I thought I could not live without and throw myself out into the unknown. I had to dare myself again and again to face life and my recapitulating process with nothing familiar in hand. I had to continually challenge myself to break through the barriers that kept me from fully experiencing myself in the world. And truthfully, just as I experience early morning as a magical time, my recapitulation process was also a magical time.

Deciding to take a recapitulation journey is deciding to truly live—on personal terms—unfettered by opinions, judgments, rules, pacts, secrets and lies. It is choosing to deconstruct, sort through the mess, and reconstruct the self with only that which is personally relevant. At first it may indeed feel like a death, because it is a dying process as the old self dies and a new self, mostly unknown, dares to push into life. The process is natural. Like nature we too have the capability of dying to old ideas and old selves and allowing for new life.

Now, during this growing season, I watch the seeds I’ve planted bursting forth from the earth, thrilled at the speed and energy of this new life. As I listen to the birds and taste the wild strawberries, I am reminded that recapitulation, that death to new life, is the most natural of processes. As I walk, I find the road littered with the critters hit by cars, yet I know that the crows will soon swoop down and feed off the carcasses, death leading always to life giving energy. If we choose to view it as such, we clearly see that this is a most magical time.

In choosing not doing, I choose to live on my own terms. I choose to continue recapitulating, going even more deeply into myself, questioning my actions, my thought processes, my habits, challenging myself to keep changing, to keep doing things differently, to face life and to face death, knowing that both of them are part of the cycle of nature. I find that in studying nature and the ancients—the Shamans, the Buddhists, the Hindus, etc.; teachings connected with nature, spirit, energy, and the experiences of being in all worlds simultaneously—I am not so fraught with concern about the changes taking place on the world stage. I am not so caught up in the frenzy or worry, but taking it all very seriously nonetheless.

I know that I must do my part to energetically stay in alignment with nature, to trust that Mother Nature (Pachamama, Gaia) is doing what is appropriate—perhaps she too is recapitulating because she knows it is time to do so. The Earth, as a living being, is most powerful and decisive and I must trust that her own process must be as destructive as my own recapitulation process was when I began it ten years ago. I must continue to accept that destruction is necessary for new growth and that the things happening in the world are all in alignment with a far greater process that none of us can fully comprehend. It’s a magical time.

I look forward to not doing today and every day, to seeing what else comes to greet me, what naturally unfolds as I set about my workday. It’s exciting to be alive during this magical time. The energy of change is powerful. I choose to ride it. I hope you do too!

Meet you out there,
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Take a Ride on the Wings of the Eagle

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Here are some thoughts from M. Scott Peck, M.D. in his book In Search of Stones:

“One age does not turn into another overnight. Between the Age of Faith and the Age of Reason there lay at least three hundred years of confusion. An old Age does not die easily. Today, firmly ensconced in the Age of Reason, we look back upon its pioneers—men like Galileo—with admiration and respect. For the Inquisition that persecuted him, we have only disrespect and find it hard to imagine how the authorities of the church could have been so narrow-minded, stupid, and downright cruel. Yet were we able to look through the eyes of those authorities at the dawning of the Age of Reason, we would not only have seen a crumbling of faith, we would also have been filled with terror at the impending disintegration of civilization and loss of all that gave meaning and coherency to life. Perhaps the greatest sins of religion are not those of faith per se but of faith threatened.” –page 6.

Here are some quotes from Carlos Castaneda in his book The Wheel of Time:

“To change our ideas of the world is the crux of shamanism. And stopping the internal dialogue is the only way to accomplish it… When a warrior learns to stop the internal dialogue, everything becomes possible; the most far-fetched schemes become attainable.” –pages 118-119.

“Whenever the internal dialogue stops, the world collapses, and the extraordinary facets of ourselves surface, as though they had been heavily guarded by our words.” –page 128.

“Human beings are not objects; they have no solidity. They are round, luminous beings; they are boundless. The world of objects and solidity is only a description that was created to help them, to make their passage on earth convenient.” –page 135.

“Human beings are perceivers, but the world that they perceive is an illusion: an illusion created by the description that was told to them from the moment they were born…” –page 137.

Here are some interesting quotes from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche:

“To see through the eyes of the mountain eagle, the view of realization, is to look down on a landscape in which the boundaries that we imagined existed between life and death shade into each other and dissolve. The physicist David Bohm has described reality as being “unbroken wholeness in flowing movement.” What is seen by the masters, then, seen directly and with total understanding, is that flowing movement and that unbroken wholeness. What we, in our ignorance, call “life,” and what we, in our ignorance, call “death,” are merely different aspects of that wholeness and that movement. This is the vast and transforming vision opened up to us by the bardo teachings, and embodied in the lives of the supreme masters.” –page 341.

“To see death, then, through realized eyes, is to see death in the context of this wholeness, and as part, and only part, of this beginningless and endless movement. The uniqueness and power of the bardo teachings is that they reveal to us, by showing with total clarity the actual process of death, the actual process of life as well.” –page 342.

Here are some thoughts from me:

I believe that we are always in the middle of a tornado, our world collapsing, in the process of death while in the throes of life, but that we do not perceive our world in such a manner until something shakes us out of our complacency, out of our narrow-mindedness, out of our internal dialogue, and out of our ignorance. I believe that we are being gifted with one of those times of shake-up right now.

Look around; look at what is happening. Take a ride on the wings of the eagle and realize that this is the time of confusion before the dawning of a new Age. But, as the shamans, the Buddhists, and deep spiritual thinkers suggest: this collapse is constantly presented to us—we are just not aware of it. And this is where Harold Camping, the end of the world predictor, gets it wrong. The end of the world is an every day occurrence and we all have the opportunity to grab onto the freedom of that clarity every day.

If we can learn how to let go of our reason—our internal dialogue, our conjuring mind, and our description of the world as we have been taught—and open up to the realization that everything is an illusion, we can enter a new reality. We can do this volitionally, learning how to shift our perceptions and how to experience the endless movement of energy, our own included, as it flows in the universe.

Through the process of recapitulation we learn to shed our old selves, our old perceptions and ideas of the self and the world, our self-importance, our attachments to the illusions of this world that we so solidly stand upon. In so doing we relieve ourselves of adherence to beliefs that do not truly serve us if we are ready to evolve into a new understanding of life and death.

We can experience our energetic wholeness in total freedom by constantly challenging ourselves to shatter our world as we have always perceived it, by refusing to attach to the illusions of this world. Those illusions are placed upon us from the moment we are born. If we can break our fixation with reality as we have been taught to perceive it, we might just discover that what is happening in the world, every day, is nicely set up to help us shatter those illusions. Even a momentary glimpse of a different idea of ourselves offers us the opportunity to gain in awareness, to aid us in letting go—just a little bit more—of all that holds us so attached to what we believe is so important and so dear.

Today, across America, many people are waking to a shattered world, everything gone. The tornadoes that have been touching down bringing the end of the world to so many lives remind us that we cannot hold onto anything. In such a moment we are offered the experience of impermanence. So what do we do when we stand there with nothing, when our dreams and our lives are shattered, totally gone?

This is the moment of enlightenment, the moment of freedom in collapse, the experience of death in life. The big challenge is to retain the experience of this moment of death; of ourselves without attachments, without belongings, totally released from the familiar. The is the gap moment that allows us a glimpse of our eternal selves while we still stand firmly in this world.

So, can we accept the convenience of our solidity long enough to embrace the fact that it is offered as a means from which to launch our awareness, as the shamans would pose? Can we allow ourselves to embrace this moment of impermanence, as the Buddhists would call it, as our big moment of evolutionary enlightenment? Can we hold onto our experience and use it to truly shift us away from our old ideas, needs, and desires? Can we use it to enter a new Age, an Age of true Enlightenment as the deep spiritual seekers understand it?

These are the challenges that the shamans, Buddhists, and deep spiritual seekers know are the moments that teach us how to face our deaths, but also offer us the opportunity to face our lives in the same manner. These are the moments of shattering the illusions we hold onto, though what we are really being shown is that we cannot hold onto anything and we don’t need to either.

We are beings who are going to die, as the shamans say. Yes, it’s a very scary thought, but can we live each day with that foremost in our thoughts, basing our lives on that idea? Can we live beyond the illusions of this world, and enter the flowing movement of unbroken wholeness? It’s not really that hard to do, we’re already doing it, every day!

Perhaps we just haven’t fully perceived it that way yet, but we have so many daily opportunities to do so. Every day is the end of the world.

Just trying to remain aware,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

#751 We Are All Responsible

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

It’s early Sunday morning as I write this. Chuck woke me as dawn was breaking and I got up to see the first orange sweep of the rising sun in the East and the luminous globe of the enormous “supermoon” setting through the trees in the West. The birds were already stirring and, as we sat by the woodstove and looked out the windows to the South, I saw deer grazing in the field across the road while the robins swept across the front yard, as they worked on nest building, and the squirrels ran around gathering edibles; nature awakening and going about the natural course of things. I could not help but think about what nature had enacted on the other side of the world: devastation and continued danger of high radiation in Japan, as well as the energy of revolution continually escalating in the Middle East.

Here I sit, I thought, quite happy and contented, my world in order, nature doing what nature does. It goes on as it has every spring, nesting, preparing for new life, the crocuses and daffodils emerging from the frozen ground, the sun warming the earth and, yet, I cannot forget what has been happening in our world.

Already a little more than a week has passed since the earthquake and tsunami in Japan rocked our world and we all felt the reverberations in some way. There are people who choose not to attach any importance to events taking place so far away, however, who choose not to know, who feel detached and unaffected, simply because they are not personally effected by something happening in a foreign country. The media has already gone on to new news, for the most part; the Libyan conflict—revolution equally important—now taking the headlines again.

It is appropriate that we not turn from the truth of the revolutions taking place in our world, yet I fear the nuclear disaster in Japan will be swept from our knowing, suppressed, covered in lies. We will be told again and again that there is no immediate human health danger to be concerned about, until we accept it as truth and return to our old ways. Meanwhile radiation has been released into the atmosphere, it is in cow’s milk and green leafy foods in Japan, and it is being washed into the oceans and carried on the winds. Yet we are lied to in order to keep down the panic.

Panic is necessary now. This is the time of revolution, after all. We must not listen to the voices that tell us to “go shopping” as President Bush did after 9/11, or the Japanese authorities who say they have everything under control and that there is really nothing to worry about, while at the same time radiation is spreading. In the face of the truth they blatantly lie, expecting us to acquiesce to the lies as we have always done in the past. It is not time to pull back into secrecy but to keep exposing the lies along with the real truths of what man has done to our world, to Mother Earth.

And yet, I know that inner calm is utterly necessary at times like this, that the truth must be balanced with inner pragmatism while we look deeply within and search for the true path for man to take, now more than ever. As I look upon nature itself on this beautiful morning, I receive one answer by its example. Nature tells me that life does indeed go on.

This is nature at its best, just as destruction, misery, and suffering are nature at its best. There must be death for there to be new life. Can I accept that what is happening is right for our times? Can I accept the release of radiation, the revolutions, the deaths in so many forms as right, knowing that it is forcing us to a new evolutionary possibility, for mankind to do more than just survive what he himself has wrought? This is nature in true balance. Can I be in alignment with this side of nature too?

I ask you today, Jeanne, to lead us now to a new level of understanding and consideration, as we take in the truth of what is happening, for I fear that the media will be moving on to the next crisis in the world, leaving the smoldering mess of contamination in Japan to “the experts,” while the planet suffers, and each one of us too. While baby dolphins die as a result of last year’s fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico and the fish in the Hudson River contend with heavy PCB contamination, while nature pushes us to remember, we move on so easily to the next big news item, forgetting that we too are nature.

What can we do to stay bound to the truth now? It is time to stay connected to what we have forgotten, that decay is necessary, as well as new life. I must remember, while I watch the birds building their nests, that in the woods lies the carcass of an enormous deer, rotting, its rib cage bleaching white in the sun, picked clean by scavengers. I must remember this balance in nature and be honest with myself about death.

Can you talk today about making personal choices now, as the attention to recent disasters shifts and the status quo reasserts itself, as we get back to business as usual, as I see reflected in nature on this early morning? Because that is the other truth: life does go on.

Here is Jeanne’s response to my questions:

I ask you to enjoy your moments of bliss and delight, yet maintain awareness of death, for it is true that they go hand-in-hand. But do not either forget that they are not separate activities, opposites perhaps, but in concert nonetheless, for you cannot have one without the other. This Jan points out, and yet it is what is most often forgotten as one goes about “business as usual.”

There can no longer be business as usual. You, My Dear Readers and Journeyers, if you are to be the new generation of seers upon that earth, must never return to complacency and business as usual. It is time now to remain awake, alert to the realities of your world as you have made it. You may say that this had been done by others, that you have no skills in the development of nuclear science, that you have no dispute in the war zones, but that is not so: You are all responsible.

I charge each one of you with the responsibility for your world and until you accept this responsibility you will not be a true citizen of change, nor hold the seers potential in right alignment with its proper meaning or intent.

I ask that there be no stopping the human potential to realign with nature, to rebalance with nature’s intent, for in order to evolve and come into alignment, mankind, all humanity, must react as ferociously as Mother Nature does. I do not advocate destruction without—except in the form of change—by making decisions that will be revolutionary in enacting personal and worldwide change.

Do what is right for the planet and you will do what is right for all living things. Nature goes about her business, but do not think it is business as usual, for nature contends each moment of each day with change. Nature must adapt to herself and to what man had done to her air, her waters, her soils, her growing flowers and fruits, to her creatures, and yet she does not stop. Her energy is as powerful as ever. Nature does not sleep, except to rejuvenate herself, and this is what man must learn to do as well.

Man must learn to rejuvenate his energy, so that his natural power is ready each moment of each day. If a bird falls asleep in the middle of the day it will not be in alignment with nature. If the birds all slept, instead of doing what they must to live, the balance of all nature would suffer.

Man sleeps too often when he should be awake. It is time now to shift to a more natural alignment with nature, with the rising sun and the setting sun. Learn now to work in the proper moment, to rest in the proper moment, and to act according to the laws of nature in the proper moment, all of which can only be accessed if in alignment with all things.

Accept the truths of life and death as intertwined. One without the other leads to chaos and this is where mankind, especially in the West, has faltered. He has chosen only to live. He has chosen to forget about death and thus he has created an impossible situation.

An earthquake is only the beginning of his shake up, for mankind needs to be reminded of the basic truths of his reason for being upon that earth. And what is that?

Man is a sentient being. This means he is, in truth, a spiritual presence and not a conquering presence. Man has sought to conquer nature, forgetting his spiritual self, as he sought only to feed his ego self. Now man is asked, by nature herself, to return to his sentient roots, in alignment with nature, and learn once again what nature offers: the true lessons in evolutionary growth.

Look now for personal inner balance. Seek a place of calm observation while awake and rejuvenating energy replenishment while asleep. Restore first that balance, the sleeping-waking cycles, as nature does, and you will begin to realign with man’s true intent. When in balance, you will find that you each have within you the answers you seek.

Take responsibility for the self and you take responsibility for the entire world. Remain alert to the moment, to the energy of the moment. And do not forget that in order for life, including your own, to evolve, there will be destruction and death. It is necessary and unavoidable.

A seer knows this at all times. A seer seeks balance at all times by remaining aware of his death, just as the birds and other animals do. Their instinct is strong. They know how to live and they know how to die, with dignity, in proper alignment with nature, constantly adjusting to what life presents, respectful of all other life, always on the move in natural consort/concert with evolutionary energy.

In ending, I suggest that each one of you look upon your own life, your habits, and correct your misalignment with nature as much as you can, just as you expect the rest of the world to do. And then see what happens!

Thank you Jeanne. Please feel free to post comments or respond to this message in the post/read comments section below. Also check out our facebook page at: Riverwalker Press on facebook. And thank you for passing the messages on!

Most fondly and humbly offered.

Messages from Jeanne

#727 Awareness is Life

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Jan Ketchel channeling Jeanne Marie Ketchel

Today Chuck asks a question.

Dear Jeanne,
The new seers of don Juan’s lineage determined that all sentient beings are granted life and awareness for the purpose of enhancing that awareness. With death they see a return or merger of that enhanced awareness with the source that originally sent it into life. How does this interpretation of life and death square with your experience?

What is key here in your question is awareness, for this is the essence of all existence, so I must state first of all that awareness is life, and as such there is no death. That must be established or there will be no understanding of passage from one world to another. Life itself exists in many forms and in many worlds, each life formulated to fit the needs and desires of the individual prescribed to mark a journey.

In other words, awareness/life fits many realms and individual beings for many reasons, but the most important is indeed to gain awareness so that further growth may happen. Personally, I have been on a journey of evolutionary growth, meaning that I no longer have desire or need to become human again, to embody that form. The world of human beings is one world, but there are other worlds. The last life I had upon that earth, though a deep struggle ensued, did result in my gaining enough presence/awareness to advance.

As you know, reincarnation is utilized for the purpose of enhancing awareness—or perhaps you did not know this—but in my experience the reason for life is indeed to gain new life, though this is not necessarily determined while in that world. But I will say that all life beyond that world is quite unusual!

In order to fully answer your question I must remain attached to simple facts, as follows:

1. Awareness is life, that which you cannot see but which you experience beyond the physical self and physical reality.

2. Death is not an end but a transformation leading to opportunity for new life.

3. Awareness, as individual life, does indeed merge with the greater awareness that is not individual but is all knowing. Yet does the essence of that individual (self) awareness remain cohesive forever. This is not to say that it does not change. An individual’s awareness must remain individual in order to garner enough information to grow.

4. The return of awareness to the greater source is but momentary, for with true growth there is no end of such awareness, no end of life.

To recap, I answer your question in the affirmative, yet do I also state that the experiences of each individual’s awareness will be personally relevant. The determination of progress will be personally necessary and challenging. Although the overall structure of a process may be similar, all individuals experience life and death most certainly for their own journey in the way that is most meaningful for them alone.

I do not like to speculate on an individual’s process or journey, except to promote learning of awareness, discovering the meaning of just that life, and preparation for that which is to come. Ignorance of or refusal of death is often attempted, but it is just not possible. Each individual is upon that earth for a set time and set reasons. Opportunities abound for growth, but choices must be activated and life’s vicissitudes addressed.

I realize I digress.

You do not mention the seers?

I do not ascribe to any group, as you know, except my own soul group. However, the seers had learned what all must eventually learn and their teachings are worthy of exploration. Learn wherever awareness waits for discovery. Find personal meaning, resonance, and direction. Face life without fear and learn, in so doing, to face death without fear, for they are but the same. Enhanced awareness, in carrying forth to evolutionary growth, will indeed find new direction upon death; that is certain.

A source exists for rejuvenation of purpose that will lead always to new life.

Please feel free to post comments or respond to this message from Jeanne in the post/read comments section below.

Fondly and most humbly offered.