Here is Jeanne’s message for this week, a call to connect with our spirits in quiet contemplation.
Contemplate something beautiful today… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
My heart pains for the beauty in all of you as yet untapped. Do not fear your innocence or your inner beauty. Do not fear your creative side, your spiritual side, your deeply knowing self. Do not fear revealing who you truly are. If you wish to change, this is where to begin, within the self, exactly where you find yourself now, at this point in your life, in this moment in time.
Note how you refuse the call of your spirit, though it calls repeatedly. Do not fear the outcome of your life, for if you heed your spirit’s call—though it may at first be a challenging road—it will eventually lead you to success and peacefulness.
Be pragmatic and fierce. Be determined and kind. Be loving and gentle with the self and others, yet be also intensely focused and attentive to your spirit’s guidance. Learn to listen to your inner truth, not the rhetoric of trends or outer world factions, but the voice of your deeply inner self. This voice will ask you to act only innerly. It will not ask you to project onto the world around you but only to reflect on the self. Your inner voice will never ask you to hurt another or the self. It will only ask you to be kind and loving. It will, however, seek to guide you to discipline so that you will find time within the context of living a busy and productive life for inner work and contemplation.
Seek the contemplative life in some form today and every day. This may mean you set aside a few minutes a day for calm sitting without distraction and that will be enough. The discipline required is a commitment to do this contemplative work on a daily basis. Eventually, its role will increase. As it becomes a more natural part of your life, like eating a meal or brushing your teeth, you will begin to notice your moments of quiet extending into the other hours of your life. You will begin to crave such moments and then you will know that your focus is working.
Commit to a contemplative life today. Set aside a time and place to be calm and utterly detached from the world around you. Do it daily and it will become easier and easier. I advise this above all else. Nothing will feed your spirit as the gift of quietude will. Just be quiet.
NOTE from Jan: Each morning before we jump into our day, we light a candle, a tall taper, and take a few minutes to gaze into the flame, closing our eyes every few minutes to experience the inner flame. It’s a great way to begin a contemplative practice. Even just 5 minutes sets a tone for inner calmness and connection to spirit. It calms the mind and the soul. I highly recommend it, though there are many other options available as well. Just do what feels personally right and is practical enough that you won’t have to make too much effort each day. Keep it simple and you won’t fail!
Today, I asked Jeanne: What message is most important for us to receive today? Here is her answer:
Are you ready for the energy of spirit? – Photo by Jan Ketchel
If you open to the world of energy you must be prepared for it. If you wish to invite intent into your lives you must be shored up with practical knowledge of how the world really works. You must be a strong pragmatic adult, but you must also be innocently open so that your experiences of a new reality will not be dismissed or denied.
In order to prepare, one must work hard to stabilize the self in the world you now inhabit. Determine within your own lives, My Dears, what this means to you and how you intend to go about it. Some things to keep in mind as helpful goals and objectives are the following:
Choose a path that will work for you, that is resonant with your inner spirit. This may take a while, but if you listen to your heart you will know when you have found it. You may even already be on it and not even know it. Keep in mind that life itself, your daily life and the life you were born into, is part of this greater path. The spirit’s path may be as simple as walking in nature or communing with a pet. It may suggest meditating, listening to music, breathing, dancing, just sitting quietly in calmness. In spirit will you know this path, for your spirit will be the communicator. Your spirit will take the path. Your spirit will guide you and speak to you of having found the way. This path will lead to others as you take it, each new path an off-shoot, but always resonant and connected to the original path—simply the next step. In spirit communication will you know where to go—your OWN spirit, by the way, not through or with someone else’s spirit. I speak only of your own inner spirit. No one can really make the connection with this inner self, except you. Someone else may provide structure, and this is good. The best guide is a good listener who will help you hear what you are saying, will point out the obvious, and will ask you what you want to do next.
Study the reality you are in… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Know your present reality well. Study how it works and how you respond to it. Notice your habitual patterns of behavior, your tendencies, and your patterns of abuse, reaction, complacency, and inertia. Notice how you attach and how you reject. Notice how you allow and disallow; how you follow and refuse to follow. Know your strengths and your weaknesses, your inflations and your follies. Above all, be perfectly and ruthlessly honest with the self. Notice how quickly you lose all that you gain. Do not be discouraged, just keep going.
Absolve the self of so-called sins. With compassion for the self and others move forward. With love allow yourself to take your journey, even while you allow others to take theirs. Be responsible for those in your care and learn from them. Whether they are lovers or foes, whether you are duty-bound or acting out of love and compassion does not matter—they all have something to teach you.
Be impeccable in how you treat others. Treat all beings equally, with love, kindness, and compassion, with respect and understanding that all are on journeys of evolution. All are great. All are fallible. Even you. Even the most lowly creature and the most profound of scholars are innocent beings—some aware, some not, and which ones are aware you may never know, so treat all equally.
Guide those in your care with gentleness and awe, awe for their journeys. Be non-judgmental, even as you wish to be free of judgment from others yourself. Allow the self and others to fail, this is how you learn. Allow the self and others to struggle. Allow the self and others to go off the path when necessary so that the way back may be discovered. Allow the self and others to embrace results and advances, but do not get caught in inflated ideas of the self. Encouragement is always good.
Maintain a positive outlook. If you are naturally pessimistic, find out why and what that means to you and use it to your advantage. This same kind of examination for all energy types must be explored. Find out what energy type you are and use it as both your challenge and your catalyst. Find out where your talents lie and use them until you find some new ones.
Each day dawns anew… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Always advance. Even if you cannot see the road ahead of you, know that it’s there waiting. Each step into the darkness is just like a step into the light—in both cases you are blind. Allow your inner vision to guide you. Hold fear in check. Hold the big baby inside you in check. Hold the ego in check. Find your way through practical navigation of the life you find yourself in. This is where you are. Begin there. Look around and discover something that you did not notice before.
Do a reality check several times a day. Say: Okay, where am I? And then decide what to do next based on your reality and your spirit’s intent. Don’t know your spirit’s intent? Don’t worry—just follow the path that opens before you. Eventually you will know that your spirit’s intent is to evolve. Just what this means for each of you will be unique, and how you discover it will be unique as well. How you experience it will be unique. How you grow will be unique.
If you are truly ready for the journey of your spirit, or even if you don’t know if you are ready but you hear the call, I suggest you pay attention. Heed the call and begin your journey with one step today. It will be the first step on a journey of greater fulfillment. One step at a time is the pragmatist’s way.
I love this time of year, the end of winter, the first signs of spring. The birds are fast returning. We have bluebirds checking out the nesting boxes. The geese have been flying south, their travels etched across the sky in long arching Vs. We’ve noticed that the vultures are back too. Where they go during the coldest months I have no idea, but they are noticeably absent in the dead of winter. The daffodils are poking through the ground. The first chickweed is growing close to the house where we get the most sun. The deer that have overnighted in the woods at the back of the house all winter have moved on. We’ve sighted our neighborhood foxes, ready to start the mating process again. We expect to soon see baby foxes playing about as we do every year. And we’ve smelled skunk, a sure sign of spring!
In the dead of winter I began laying out bread crumbs for the birds, only occasionally. I didn’t want to start a new habit after spending so much time breaking myself of the old habits of a lifetime. I noticed that the crows were always the first to arrive. They’d take what they wanted and then the jays would arrive for second pickings. After that, the brave little juncos came and so on down the line. After about an hour there was generally nothing left.
I started to hear the crows calling at about 6:30 every morning, sometimes earlier. “Where’s our bread, Jan!” they seemed to be saying. “We’re hungry!” And so a little guilt crept in; now I felt I had to feed them. I knew our yard was only one stop on their daily rounds through the neighborhood, but I saw that they liked punctuality and that they actually depended on the meagre crumbs I put out. It was exactly what I was trying to avoid—being predictable. But these sentinels of nature, ever watchful, would not let me be so aimless and irresponsible. And so they call me out each morning, very loudly commanding that I contribute to their welfare, that I meet their demands.
We don’t actually eat much bread, so on days when none is available I scrounge through the fridge and pantry looking for something that might appeal. I refuse to buy commercial birdseed, with its chemicals and corporate intent. I believe in recycling. The other day I put out some sweet potato fries. “Thumbs up!” the birds said. “YUM!” Then I put out some stale tortilla chips. “Thumbs down. YUCK!” they said, and the pile of yellow corn chips lies there still. I’m sure that the Jehovah’s Witness who stopped by the other day and stuck a flyer in the door wondered just what that pile of chips—organic too—was doing there!
My observations of nature during winter lead me to write this blog today. I’ve noticed how beneath the snow there is vibrant life, energy gathering for the moment of emergence. When the time is right, the tulips and daffodils poke through the frozen ground, the wild onions pop up, and the first wild garlic-mustard turns toward the morning light. I was thrilled the other day to see just these signs of life as the snow finally melted in our yard. It got me to thinking about us, how the human condition is much like nature.
We too have something struggling to emerge…. Photo by Jan Ketchel
We too have lots of things inside us struggling to emerge, secrets waiting to reveal themselves, beauty waiting to blossom, desires waiting to be lived, repressed memories waiting for the right moment to be known. We too hold back until the time is right. Can I dare to be the person I truly am? Must I wait another season before I finally give myself permission to do this or that? How long can I hold back that which is stirring inside me?
Nature doesn’t think. Nature acts. Nature doesn’t hold back. Nature is in constant flux and change. Nature is constantly transforming even when we think it’s dead, in the dead of winter, frozen and covered in snow. So is our physical body like nature, constantly changing and transforming. Our cells slough off and regrow, our organs totally regenerate every few years, some quicker than that. We aren’t even aware of how like nature our bodies are. Without thought we are like the seasons.
There’s another part of us that lies inside the physical body, our spirit, and even deeper than that lies our soul. Inside this vehicle we call our body these two parts of who we truly are, our ancient reincarnated selves, lie waiting. More deeply hidden from our awareness than even the mysterious workings of our physical bodies, these parts go along with us as we face the world each day and go about our lives. But these are the parts of us that are like the crows calling, asking us to attend to them, urging us to become predictable and reliable sources of nurturance. “Wake up and feed us!” they say. These are the parts that lie below the frozen surface and wait for the warmth of spring. These are the parts that when we are ready will pop up and take us forward on new journeys of transformation and change, in both our inner and our outer world.
In recapitulation, these are the parts that emerge alongside our memories. These are the parts that lead us down the paths of memory and retrieval of self. These are the parts that teach us that we are all the same, that we are all beings of love and compassion. These are the parts that at some point in our spiritual evolution must become the most important aspects of being human. When we are ready we will know them more fully. When we are ready our own springtime will arrive. Until then, I suggest tossing a few morsels of sustenance, a few hellos, a few nods of recognition. “I know you’re there, I’ll be back someday soon.”
It’s okay to wait, but be aware that until the time is right for these parts to emerge and inform us of what we must learn about ourselves, preparations are underway. We may already have received many knocks at the door, asking us to venture deeper into our physical bodies and discover what’s there. We may have already been invited deep inside, gone down to our roots. We may have already gotten to our core issues and our core reasons for living this life we live now. We may have already done a recapitulation or be in the midst of doing it.
The real key to being human is that we are not really like nature at all. We have the ability to think, to reason, and to explore our inner world. We have parts inside us asking us to work with them, to make something happen that will transform us. We have free will, the freedom to learn how to enact our own transformation so we can be different, so we can live our lives in a new unpredictable way, yet fully in alignment with our true spirit and soul nature.
The crows of recapitulation will come calling… Photo by Jan Ketchel
And so, even if it may appear to be quite impossible that we could ever change our circumstances, we really do have the ability to choose how we want to live. We can choose to live as if it were springtime all the time. In fact, I believe this is what our spirit and our soul ask of us, to always be connected to them, to know them in the deepest way.
They ask us to not forget that they are what make us who we are, make us human, for they are the energy behind our human physical body. They ask us to be aware when the snows come, to be ready to thaw the ground and let our flowers blossom in spite of it. They are like the crows calling us to responsible tenure, to attend to these most important aspects of our human condition. It is here, in our spirit and soul selves being allowed to live, that we will truly evolve.
We will know when the time is right to answer the knocks on the door, either in this lifetime or another, but eventually we will all have to answer. We will all have to feed the crows of recapitulation, the spirit connectors that come asking us if we are ready yet.
Today the crows got bread! And my spirit and soul? They got to express themselves in this blog.
From the heart and soul of me, I wish you well,
Jan
Change is happening now. Don’t you see it? Don’t you feel it? In your own lives change is happening.
If you decide that you are stuck, then you will miss the exuberant energy of change that has come to visit you. However, if you decide to embrace the energy of change, no matter where it may take you or what it might mean in the long run, you will be greatly surprised and relieved of your constant issues of discord.
Discord, of spirit, comes with being human, for human body and spirit will fight each other, even to the death. Yet, keep in mind that spirit and body both never give up, for they are married to each other until a new level of understanding is reached. Only then will they relinquish their grip upon each other, a grip that is both loving and adversarial. This is an ancient bond that will determine the evolution of each one of you.
Do you fight your spirit?
Find the means of communicating with your spirit throughout the day. Ask it to guide you. And yes, your own spirit will guide you; speaking to you in terms you will understand. The only thing you need to do is listen. Pay attention often enough and finally you will get the clear messages that are being directed through your human self, your body, for this is the language your spirit speaks: Body Speak. Once you understand this, it will become easier to communicate with your spirit, and you will understand your body/spirit discord as your greatest asset.
Keep in mind that spirit self resides in body self, so most often spirit will speak through body self. This means that you must start listening to how your body reacts. Investigate what it tells you. Take your first assumption, which will most likely be a mind/thought/worry/fear reaction—perhaps even full of self-loathing or deeply self-effacing—and go deeper, beyond the mind and into the body alone. Eventually you will get the deeper meaning of the signs your spirit is communicating through your body.
For instance: If you eat too much you might get a tummy ache, bloating, gas, etc. This might make you feel bad about yourself, leading to thoughts of gluttony, inability to control desire, neediness, self-hatred, etc. But what is your body really telling you? It is really telling you that it speaks to you! In very simple language that you can actually feel!
What does your headache tell you? What is your spirit telling you by your inertia? What is your spirit trying to alert you to in your vigorous energy today? What is your spirit trying to tell you, as it speaks through the wall of your human body?
Some Body Speak is easier to understand than others, such as sleepiness, hunger, thirst, but there are deeper signals behind each and every sign you receive.
Take sleepiness for instance. Okay, my body tells me I’m tired. What do I do? Fight it? A good reaction would be to pay attention and get some rest; without resentment, anger or worry, simply acquiesce. Take it to another level as you acquiesce. With care of self in mind, allow rest to be what it should be: rejuvenating. Ask spirit self to let the body rest for so many hours. Ask dreams to guide you as you sleep. Ask awareness to remember dreams upon awakening. Use sleep time on many levels, with the first intent being care of body, and second being spiritual work.
This is what body and spirit desire in human beings: constructive cooperation, enthusiasm, and commitment to growth. This is what life itself desires, life as an evolutionary project, for each one of you is a work of art. Each one of you is the inspiration and the artist, and the project itself. Each one of you has all that it takes to create a beautiful artistic creation: The Self.
Requirements for such creative work are simple: willingness, perseverance, and openness to the possibilities that you are constantly being offered to do the work of the self. All of you have the materials and tools within.
Don’t be so afraid of life. Life is yours; within you it seeks expression. Begin there. Stop looking for it outside of you and look inward. This is where your creative energy awaits, where spirit resides, in your own body. The two, spirit and body, are inexplicably aligned, even when you don’t think they are.
Ask them to teach you, and then wait, with the sure knowing that they will. Be ready to receive your guidance. Learn how it comes. It may take some time to figure it out, but just remember this: everything is meaningful. Do not dismiss anything that comes to you, for you may be missing the guidance you so desperately seek.
Life itself shows you the way to enlightenment, fulfillment, wholeness, connection, and all else that you seek. Be open. Be kind to self and others. Learn impeccability. Learn these things and what they really mean each day that you live your creative inner life.
Work on the self is the most unselfish of acts. Find the means to begin a new project: evolution of the self, ergo evolution of the world. Resolve the discord between body-self and spirit-self, for the self and for the greater good. You can’t go wrong. Listen to your Body Speak.
Live for yourself now. Pull your attention away from others—from the energy of old and stale lives, from the judgments and criticisms of your past—and more fully embrace a new you, distinctly different, unique, and fully capable of growing beyond where you now find yourself.
When I speak of growth, it is personal growth, in the direction of deep inner work that I mean. This must be the main focus in an evolutionary life. All of you, whether you feel inhibited by circumstances or not, are fully capable of resolving your inner conflicts and reaching a place of progressive contentment, finding yourselves upon a path of eternal growth.
Inner conflict resolution involves setting the intent to set the spirit self free, the self that has had to sit below the surface of life’s experiences, for the most part, pushed down by others and yet waiting for its moment to live, constantly attempting to get your attention. This is not an immature self, not a big baby self who just wants to live without restriction; no, this is a most mature and knowing self, calm and flowing.
This is a good week to reconnect with that deeply stirring spirit self, the true self that seeks life. The process of inner work is really quite simple if you pare it down to this one goal: to excavate the true self.
Do this by sifting through all that is not you, by refusing to accept beliefs and ideas that do not truly resonate. What do you truly believe about the self and the life you desire? Are you ready to break through the old crusts of discourse, mind control, and the dissonant waves of conflict that have imprisoned you, and really allow your spirit to live, even a little? Who says you can’t?
Begin slowly, by questioning everything as you go about your days. Ask for clarification on what comes to you from both outside and inside. Is this I or is this Not I? In this manner, adding awareness of how the body, heart, and true mind respond, you will be guided to making some changes in your lives that are right for YOU, My Dear Ones.
Take it one step at a time, letting each day unfold, but with a little effort on your part too. Meeting the spirit self that is stirring inside you, one-on-one, will greatly aid your progress.
What have you recently encountered or learned that is laying out your next step?
There is always a new path to take...
As always, I say there will be no change, no progress, if you do not participate! This may take some discipline, but, really, all you need to do is begin by being proactive on your own behalf. However, listen to the answers that come from inside the self this time, rather than the old answers constantly repeating and reverberating from elsewhere, for they are merely confining you, the old guard that hold no new life. Give the self a new positive mantra, confrontational and challenging, yet utterly true.
Capture some new ideas about the self this week and put them into action; try them on for size and see how you feel. What do you have to lose? Nothing important really, I propose, but you do stand to gain immeasurably!
One step at a time, aware of each moment, aware of deep inner self and knowing what is right, make your way toward a new YOU!
Thank you, Jeanne, and yes, one step at a time, with humbleness, I too make my way. Thanks for reading and being part of this unfolding journey! If this is possible, then what else?
