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Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: I Am Here

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I focus on staying present. I am doing yoga.

“I am here,” I say. “I am here in this body, in this moment.”

“I am me,” I say. “I am me in this body.”

“I am this body,” I say. “I live here on earth in this body.”

“I am here,” I say. “I am me.”

I am present in this moment...

As I move and breathe, I bring my attention back again and again to the moment, to being present in my body. I thank myself for giving myself this healing time and I thank the universe for providing the paths I took to get to this moment of this day. I take each moment as sacred, as ritual.

I take a moment to write down my thoughts of awareness of being, of being in my body, of being in the moment of doing yoga somewhere in the world, a small speck of awareness in the universe, one small speck of knowing that I am alive, intent on being fully present in my body.

Sometimes I am pretty aware of being present in my body, but most often I am not. Most often I am somewhere else, my body along for the ride. But in this moment, I am aware that my body is my natural environment, my beingness resides in it and depends on it, needs it, trusts it. I am in the moment, present and enjoying the rituals of doing yoga, of breathing, and of being consciously aware.

Ritual of Fire

After I do yoga, I carry the wood from the woodpile. I build a fire and light it, another ritual. I am aware that this is a ritual performed by millions of others. Since fire became a part of human life this ritual has been important. As I carry out the steps of making my fire, I am aware that I am partaking in an ancient practice of firemaking for the same reasons that eons of people have made fires. I do not cook over my fire, but I seek warmth. I am part of an ancient ritual today as I make my fire. I honor the ritual and I honor myself in the process of partaking in this ritual. I honor all who have done this before me.

I take time to notice that I am present. I am me. I am in my body, present in this moment doing this ritual. In the next moment the fire is burning well. I can turn to other things now, back to my writing, back to preparing for other rituals that come throughout the day, if I care to see them as such.

I remind myself to slow down and take the time to feel myself in my body often throughout the day, present in the moment and in my awareness of being, as often as possible. I remind myself to remain aware that my daily activities and chores are part of my ritual life too.

Honor and create ritual

I remind myself to invent new rituals as I go along, making life sacred, simply because it is and it deserves to be lived in sacred fashion. I deserve it, the earth deserves it, all creatures—man included—deserve the honor of sacred ritual. If we all slowed down and made our personal lives sacred rituals, if we all invented our own personal rituals—honoring and thanking ourselves, our bodies, others in our lives, the universe—perhaps we’d end up with enough pauses full of calmness and peace to temper the otherwise busy and fast-paced world we live in.

When we slow down enough we realize we don’t really need that fast-paced world. We discover we don’t really want to live like that. When we slow down we discover that we, by our very animal nature, are more connected to the earth and the sacred ritual of a simple life than we realized. When we slow down we walk and breathe the pulse of the earth and it calms us and nurtures us beyond anything else we might have available.

We desire our vacations by the ocean, a lake, in the calmness of the mountains or meadows because we are animals who crave nature’s slow pace and the beat of our heart knows this. By establishing our personal rituals we automatically slow to the beat of our heart, and automatically our perception of our personal place in the world shifts too. We actually become one with nature, connected and aware of being in the moment, in our bodies, in the right place: in total beingness.

The Sacred Beat of Nature

No matter what is going on around us or inside us, when we slow everything down and take a sacred moment we are at peace. Even if only for a moment, it is enough.

Tomorrow I will build a different fire, but the ritual, the process, will have the same ancient energy in it. Whether I focus on the ritual of it or not, whether I am as aware as I am today, I will still be tapping into the energy of ancient ritual. I know this energy of infinity, as ancient as the tapping of my own heartbeat. It is as ancient as the tapping of your own heartbeat, one pulse, beating for eternity. The ritual is already present. We just have to make ourselves available to it and tap into it.

As humans we have so much available to us. Our creative energy begs us to pause and pay attention to its insistence that we are not so modern as we might believe. We are ancient energy and we know instinctively how to connect with it and what to do with it.

Find sacred ritual in life, in nature, in self. Be in the moment. Be present in the body self. Breathe with awareness. That too is ritual. Be thankful to the self and the universe and then pause and listen to its reply. In the calm beat of your own heart you will hear its resonant beat.

Present in the moment, in calmness, in beingness,
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Consider the Trees

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The way of the tree

We can learn a lot from studying the trees. During her recapitulation, Taisha Abelar, a cohort of Carlos Castaneda’s, lived for a time in a tree. She’d never climbed a tree in her life when she began but by the time six months had passed she’d recapitulated through many dark nights in the tree house she slept in. Over that time she had absorbed so much of tree life that she could communicate with trees directly. She learned to be silent enough to sense their needs, to know their pain, and to communicate with them through feeling. But she also found herself freed of her traumatic past.

“As I was seated on a sturdy limb with my back resting on the tree trunk, my recapitulation took on an altogether different mood,” she writes in The Sorcerers’ Crossing. “I could remember the minutest details of my life experiences without fear of any coarse emotional involvement. I could laugh my head off at things that at one time had been deep traumas for me. I found my obsessions no longer capable of evoking self-pity. I saw everything from a different perspective, not as the urbanite I had always been, but as the carefree and abandoned tree dweller that I had become.”

During the recent early winter storm, I thought a lot about the trees. As I watched them bear the brunt of the snow and the wind, I saw the parallel between learning to become like a tree, withstanding the beauty and fury of nature, and doing a recapitulation.

Trees are rooted, unable to move from their designated spots. Forced to withstand constant exposure they must be strong enough to survive yet weak enough to bend in the breeze. From the heights of the highest branches we can gain a new perspective on life and the world around us. Offering us the opportunity to gain new insights and clarity, they also offer us deep grounding. The deeper the root system, the better the connection to the life force of Mother Earth.

Trees are silent beings, observers of life, pensive and heavy, yet they jostle and sway, tossing lightly and gaily in the wind. They lose branches in storms. They topple over when their time is done and return to the earth from which they once sprang. They know the course of their lives, having lived them many times. Upon their demise, springing up again from their deepest roots or previously dropped seeds, they are ready to take on life anew. Most meaningful to us is that they give us the oxygen we need in order to breathe and live on this planet, thus their lives are more than meaningful, for they support all human life.

We too must learn to become like the trees as we recapitulate. We must learn how to stand our ground, our roots firmly sunk in the nurturing earth while at the same time we withstand the onslaughts of the past. Steady and balanced in two worlds—roots in the earth and branches reaching for the heavens—we too are capable of withstanding the onslaughts of the seasons of our lives. Whether we recapitulate a fine memory, a delightful memory, or a horrific memory too distasteful to speak of, we can learn from the trees how to handle what comes to greet us in recapitulation.

During the recent storm, I noticed the trees in my yard standing silently, accepting the unusually early snowstorm. I saw them bear the weight of the unexpected snow cover. I saw them bowing down under the weight of the heavy attack from outside, their leaves unsuspecting collaborators. I saw them bear the tension, until it was time to let go because they could no longer hold back what had been imposed on them. I heard the breaking of limbs, leafy branches that had no recourse but to snap.

I saw all of this and said to myself: This is like recapitulation. During recapitulation we are not in control, yet we strive to control in the old ways that worked for us. But during recapitulation we are often confronted with things that we just cannot control, things that come at us out of nowhere like this autumn winter. We too have no recourse then but to snap beneath the weight of the onslaught and allow what falls from us to be strewn at our feet. We too, like the trees, can look down and see our branches of self—parts of ourselves that we thought we needed to hold onto—and realize that they now lie at our feet and yet we still stand.

During the storm cleanup we can look back and wonder: Did we really need to hold onto those parts we once thought so dear? Without them we feel lighter, freer, our branches now able to lift higher than before. Freed of the burden of trauma, of the accumulation of old ideas, misconceptions, and old perceptions of the self, we are like the trees, able to experience ourselves in a new way, just as Taisha once did. No longer attached to the past in the same way we find that, having recapitulated, we are totally different beings.

There are sturdy and tall trees, oaks and maples, and yet there are supple and easily swayed trees that survive just as long, that have the ability to spring back to life no matter what occurs. In recapitulation, is it better to be so strong that our branches continually snap and break off until we are limbless? Or is it better to sway in the breeze of our recapitulation, knowing that we are firmly rooted, connected to the life force of all things, certain that new life awaits? At some point in our recapitulations we must all consider how we are going to proceed on our life’s journey. What kind of tree are we going to be?

Indeed we can and should study the trees. In their silence alone they offer so much for our consideration. Just contemplating the fact that we could not survive on this planet without them may be enough of a start. I hold trees in the highest regard and I am thankful for them. With great respect, at each breath I take, I am humbled to share the planet with them.

Jan

Messages from Jeanne

#774 Suffering & Awe

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

The day after Hurricane Irene tramped through the Northeast, downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it got to us, dawns calm and sunny. We fared better than expected. All of the many ponds along our rural road overflowed and we were landlocked for most of the day on our mountaintop. But we didn’t lose power as our neighbors down the road did nor did we lose any trees. We still have internet service so I can send out this blog, and although the road to civilization is still flooded at one end we can wind our way to the main highway in the other direction. The freakiest part of the storm, for me, came last evening—after the rains had stopped—when a barrage of powerful wind gusts plowed through here, lasting for several hours, ominous and fierce in intensity. That’s when the trees came down at the other end of the road and our neighbors lost power. It was as if nature was warning us to not fall back into complacency, suggesting that yes, we had indeed gotten off the hook this time, but don’t take it too lightly. Perhaps this storm was all just preparation for the bigger ones to come.

From one end...

In the midst of the fury of those intensely battering gusts an enormous double rainbow spanned the sky. From the field across the road we gathered with neighbors to take in the full breadth of this wondrous spectacle of nature—just another reminder that we really have no control over what happens in the world outside of us. I took the rainbow as a sign to just keep hanging in there, stay with the awe of what life offers, ominous and wondrous both, and that everything will be fine in the end.

As I write this morning, I am reminded of two things related to the storm and to channeling these messages from Jeanne. Chuck and I spoke of these two things as we went through the lashing of Irene. Several years ago, perhaps as far back as 2005, Jeanne had warned of big changes to come, that weather related and natural events would be the changing factor in our world—not only changing the coastline and the shape of the world as we know it but the entire deeper makeup of it as well. She warned us to be prepared for this.

We actually felt lucky yesterday that we had already been hit badly last fall when a tornado came through in the middle of the night and took down our tall pines. Our house sustained damage then, our yard was ripped apart, but we’ve had so many windstorms since then and each time we breathe a sigh of relief that those tall trees that we so admired and appreciated no longer sway over our heads.

The other thing that kept popping up yesterday was Jeanne’s constant reminder that everything will be fine, that it will work out the way it’s supposed to, that in the end we will discover that we are exactly where we should be.

...to the middle...

Jeanne is fond of reminding us often that if we can learn to flow with what comes to challenge us we’ll have an easier ride and perhaps we’ll be able to notice the signs of the inevitable change, as well as the moments of awe and transformation a lot sooner too. This is true in everyday life as well as when doing recapitulation. I have found Jeanne’s words both comforting and reassuring no matter where I am in my life. Yesterday, as we repeated them often throughout the day, they once again guided us to flow through the storm, prepared but available to accept the inevitability of it.

Jeanne always suggested that we’d have an easier ride through life if we made the decision to acquiesce to the inevitable rather than fight it. Fighting takes a lot of energy and in the end we discover that it is fairly wasted as we end up having to let go anyway. We end up in the same place whether we resist or flow. The choice, however, remains in our hands.

Today, I am accepting of this changing world, both the outer world and my inner world, as I expect myself to acquiesce to the constant challenges of both of those worlds. I awaken healthy, thankful, respectful of nature and where we are today, as I ask Jeanne for a message as we begin this week.

What does it mean that we have gone through such a storm? What is the real significance, on a spiritual level and in general? Each one of us may have to face our personal truths regarding it, but, on a broader scale, how can we understand the meaning of it? What is the universe trying to tell us now?

Here is Jeanne’s response.

There is little to worry about as a new day dawns, except to pick up the pieces, salvaging that which is usable but in the interim learn what it means to let go. Even as you collect your old stuff around you, realize that in some way you were forced to let go of something. Learn to release attachments to old things and old ways and move on in life without regret. One can choose to travel lightly and with relative ease, moving always forward, or one can choose to travel heavily overburdened without a goal or deeper perspective. How one views and deals with natural and other disasters is always a choice.

As a new day dawns, I suggest that your same inner issues remain, though you may have gained some insight regarding the self after having encountered the fury of nature. In retrospect, investigate the self. Find the inner response, today’s response, and work with that. How can you change as a result of what you have both innerly and outerly just encountered or suffered through?

...to the other end.

Each moment of turmoil and suffering points the self in a new direction, offering an opportunity to change. How can you change now? How can you personally change? Many things are shown, presented and offered to you during the brewing, unleashing, and dying down of a natural disaster. Take it personally, as a personal message, as an offering in how to do inner work. Reflect on the self.

Yes, the natural world is rapidly changing and shifting. This you must all note. The natural world is showing you how to evolve. Can you choose personal evolution in keeping with that outer world? That’s the way to go.

Change is necessary now on all levels of society. I urge all of you to remain alert, aware of the necessity for drastic change in your world. Be daring enough to continue pushing the self to go beyond this moment. Each confrontation with the fears that reside inside means you are evolving.

I am with you all. You are not alone.

Choose to be open to change and you will fare well. Choose to fight it and you may suffer greatly, unduly so. You will end up in the same place anyway—evolved—though in the long run perhaps having learned a lesson very well that you did indeed need to learn in such a way. If constantly fighting the spirit’s call to change you may miss the evolutionary moments though—those grand moments of awe. With alertness and good preparation, in doing constant inner work, as you use the outer world as reflection, you all have the opportunity to evolve with awareness. Frightening as it may seem, you are all on a journey of change.

Again, I tell you: I am with you. And as Jan says: Yes, everything will be fine. Everything will be just fine, as it should be!

Thank you, Jeanne!

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Lessons in Walking

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The sun was shining, seemingly brighter and earlier than normal after a couple of days of overcast skies and thunderstorms. I was eager to walk in it’s first light.

“Don Juan says never carry anything in your hands when you walk,” Chuck reminded me, so I put my tiny digital camera in my pocket, wondering if I’d encounter something special, beautiful, or profound to photograph as we walked.

After we’d walked along for a while, talking quietly, I noted that there wasn’t much happening in the world around us. It wasn’t presenting its usual natural wonders, nothing to take a picture of. It seemed quiet. One car passed us. Then a bicyclist passed by, head down. Slumped over the handlebars he seemed focused on the front wheel endlessly turning as it rode the pavement. I recognized him as someone we pass often at that hour. He always seems depressed, never utters a greeting, never looks up, focused only on the road in front of him. Other than that I noted again the quiet of the morning. But then, at the same time, we both saw a rabbit, the first sign of real life. We smiled and acknowledged that nature does not disappoint.

Then I realized that I’d been like the man on the bike today, my head down, my eyes on the road ahead of me. As I’d taken each step I’d been aware only of what lay at my feet: the color of the pavement, the interplay of shadows and light, the leaves, bark, twigs and branches that came down in the violent storms that came through yesterday afternoon. The rabbit reminded me to look around, to lift my head from the path and see what else was available in my world at that moment.

Now the walk was different. Suddenly I was engaged in what was happening around me. Suddenly the perceived dull and sleepy world was alive and I was too. I noted how mistaken I was in my assumption that not much was happening. I recalled the first sounds we’d heard upon awakening in the morning, the baby foxes yipping and yelping in the backyard. I remembered the male bluebird who sat outside our window on the railing of the deck, letting us know that he and his mate have returned to the nesting box nearby for a third time this year, another egg-laying in progress, life giving new life.

As I recapitulated these earlier experiences, I studied again the bike rider, envisioning his riding posture, his energy stuck in his routine of riding along the same route each day, not noticing what else was around him. Unable to lift his head, I wondered what plagued him, and what he might be missing that could set him on a different path. I found myself empathizing with his dilemma, whatever it might be, for I too fall into the same patterns, ride the same road, only taking in the next step as I watch my foot hit the ground in front of me. Little changes, and even less is noticed, if I do not lift my eyes from the path in front of me.

This is what happens to all of us as we live out our lives, staying within our routines, caught in the endless turning of the wheel, whether it’s the endless wheel of work-worry-sleep, followed by more work-worry-sleep, or if it’s simply the daily routines we set out for ourselves. Even as we act out the habitual must-dos that really lead us nowhere, underneath it all we really do know that we need something else to make our lives meaningful and happy. But how do we step off the wheel? Today, I was reminded that if I just look up and away, in an instant the world becomes an entirely different place.

Once we set the intent to recapitulate, we can fall into the same kinds of habitual patterns, get stuck on similar wheels. Our personal dilemmas and deepest issues can overwhelm us. We can get caught in feeling sorry for ourselves, feeling neglected, abandoned, sad and depressed as we revisit our past and confront how we have lived, whether by choice or by circumstance. As we’re drawn back to recapitulate, we may forget to take in the world around us. Even while in deep recapitulation we must lift our heads and be in the world, for in my experience, it’s the world around us that offers us the help we need to interpret, to guide, to revision ourselves, as well as offering us the means to resolution. It’s also only in the world around us that we will find the means to relieve the stresses and intensities of doing deep inner work.

It’s also the world around us that offers us the opportunities to stretch our legs, so to speak, to experience ourselves as changing beings. As we recapitulate, we’re offered the chance to show ourselves and the world just how much we’ve changed, by refusing to do things the old way. As we face daily challenges in our old world, we’re offered the opportunity to test the new perspectives gained through the hard work of recapitulation. There is no better test ground or world in which to advance than the one we live in. This is the place we must do our evolutionary work in, and recapitulation is evolutionary work.

After the sighting of the rabbit I knew all I had to do was look up and allow the world to greet me with whatever it had to offer. As the second half of today’s walk progressed I lifted my eyes from the road and began to notice all the edible wild foods growing alongside the rural road we walk along, the prickly lettuce, the lambs ear, and plantain. I lifted my eyes higher and noticed that swallows now line the wires near the wetlands area where a few weeks ago the red winged blackbirds sat, sentinels guarding their nesting flocks in the tall grasses. As I walked even a week ago they’d dive down at me, warning me to keep away. They’ve moved on now, leaving the swallows their old perch. The world is constantly changing, I noted.

I heard the croak of a raven behind me and, looking higher still, I saw a tiny bird attacking him high in the sky, keeping him from raiding a nest no doubt. The hungry raven was no match for the tiny sharp-beaked bird and he flew off, cro-cro-croaking his guttural cry.

“What does that mean?” I wondered, for I find the raven most significant in my own world.

“Cro-Cro-CROAK! Cro-Cro-CROAK! Cro-Cro-CROAK!” replied the raven in answer to my question.

I repeated this phrase to myself a few times before I finally got the meaning of the raven’s call.

Don't Forget!

Don’t Forget! Don’t Forget! Don’t Forget! he seemed to be saying.

Don’t forget to use the world around you every day as you go through life. Don’t forget to lift your eyes from your well-worn path, from the routines, and notice what else is available to guide you along. Don’t forget that everything is available, possible, a guiding force, a messenger, a reminder. Don’t forget that as you recapitulate you learn new things about yourself and that you may not be as stuck and unavailable to change as you may think. Don’t forget to exercise the new you in the world. Don’t forget to actually put to use the new ideas, thoughts, and experiences you’ve been having. Don’t forget to trust your journey as perfectly right for you. And overall, don’t forget to allow yourself to experience the world differently.

You already know that the world is not as you at first perceive it, the raven reminds. This is what you learn all the time, but can you allow yourself to actually participate in that different world that you have worked so hard to enter, to understand, and to embrace?

The world of nature and the personal world we each live in, offers us everything we need to grow and change. To recapitulate or not is our personal choice. However, in my experience, everyday life is offering us opportunities to recapitulate and to use what we learn about ourselves all the time. We just don’t know this until we decide that it’s so, when we set the intent to re-experience how we’ve understood the world. Sometimes all we need to jump-start new life it the realization that we’re eager for a new perspective because the old one just doesn’t work for us anymore. That was my walking experience this morning.

As soon as I lifted my eyes from the hard gray road in front of me, I discovered a world of wonder. What is recapitulation anyway, but an opportunity to look at ourselves and our world with different eyes. Sometimes we need someone else’s eyes to show us what we’ve been missing. Sometimes we have to dare ourselves, push ourselves to go beyond our routines, ask ourselves to break through our old habits. Sometimes we have to ask ourselves to face our truths so we can move on, without regret, without sadness, simply because it’s time and right to do so. Recapitulation is happening all the time. Do you notice?

By the time I’d gotten home from my walk, I was in a new world. The bluebird greeted me on the deck again, showing me just how much in alignment with my spirit’s eagerness for changing life our natural world really is.

What are you being offered today to change your perspective, your outlook, your inner world, your relationship to self and others? There’s always something out there. What was the first indication in your world today that it’s just not as routine and boring as you’ve perceived it to be? Even in the subtlest ways, nature guides us.

Sending love and good wishes, and I thank the raven for posing ever so briefly so I could snap a photo of him!
Jan

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