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Messages from Jeanne

#746 Navigating the Mystical

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Sorry this is so late in getting out today!

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

Over the past few weeks we have been exploring, with Jeanne, practical techniques for navigating through life while confronting our issues and embracing our journeys. As many of you know, back in 2001, I began a very intense three-year personal journey, a recapitulation, as the seers of ancient Mexico call it, reliving the most important and transformative moments of my life. However, it was not until I actually began that recapitulation process that I was able to clearly perceive those moments as the most important and transformational, before that they were either merely disturbing experiences or totally unknown memories. I also learned that if one has a knowledgeable, aware, seasoned guide as one takes the recapitulation journey, one is indeed fortunate, even though the bulk of the work to be done lies within the self, both the questions and the answers.

During my odyssey into my self, as I took that recapitulation journey, I was offered daily opportunities to break through perceptions, judgments, definitions, and just about everything I had previously been taught to emerge on the other side of myself in a new world. In more modern terms, I took a transpersonal journey, working from where I was in my life at the time and going far back through myself to emerge in the prebirth world of the so called collective unconscious, as termed by Jung. This transpersonal world is what I would describe as access to all knowledge, all worlds, through all time. It is where ancient wisdom resides, and where all things are possible.

Lately, Chuck and I have been studying the work of Stanislav Grof, who over the past half century or so, has explored the mystical experience in great depth, and who coined the modern term transpersonal to describe the realm of the collective unconscious. He was disturbed by the fact that within Western modern science and psychology there was nothing to define the mystical experience, no categories existed and no credence was given to this most ancient of experiences. Experiences of the sublime, such as out-of-body and near-death experiences, as well as transcendent meditation experiences were given little or no value. In essence, experiences in the ancient pre-scientific world were pooh-poohed, dismissed as meaningless and crazy in the face of real hard-proven scientific fact. Grof seriously began to explore and document mystical experiences and attempted to bring this ancient wisdom into mainstream psychology. It still sits somewhat on the edge, though many, many people in the West have been offered validation and acceptance of their experiences of the unexplainable through his work and that of many others.

Anyone who has had experiences of the mystical knows how impossible it is to dismiss the experience, especially in cases when it has been transformational. Of course, it can be pushed aside as meaningless or disturbing, which is what I once did in an attempt to stay in tiptop control over everything in my life, but as time went on it became increasingly more difficult to do so as the experiences began to intrude on real life. It was not until I was ready to receive the messages that these mystical experiences were attempting to deliver that I could finally turn and look them straight in the face. I believe everyone has had experiences of the mystical and sublime and, when ready, these encounters will be accepted into conscious awareness.

In undertaking a recapitulation journey, if properly guided, we learn not only how to use these experiences to continue our life’s journey, but we may also be afforded the opportunity to use them to transport us to the transpersonal realm, where all knowledge exists, the personal, the pre-personal, and awareness of the interconnectedness of all energy, including us.

I have, and I say this with great humility and thanks, learned to transport back to the transpersonal quite easily. Through my recapitulation process I eventually learned to trust the mystical experiences I had, to allow myself to go where they took me, documenting my journeys, gathering from them the truth of the real possibility that all of us can access this transpersonal world volitionally. Although Grof led many experiments into the transpersonal using LSD, I have never used drugs. I didn’t need them. Life itself was enough of a catalyst to get me where I needed to go, as it rocketed me into the surreal over and over again, both before I ever heard about recapitulation and then certainly once I began that journey.

Once I learned to cultivate those experiences, understanding them as meaningful experiences of awareness, I gained a personal understanding of the mystical and how we can use it to guide us, through understanding not only life, but death and the greater universe as well. Now, after ten years of journeying by choice, I know I can never stop. It is my path, my intent, and my most personal challenge as well. Unfortunately, I can’t live there all the time, much as I would like to. In the meantime, I am happy to write about it, and help others achieve the peace it offers.

What I am getting at today in this blog is the true fact that we can all do this. I am nothing, no one special. I call myself by no name except the one I have in the real world, and even that I am not that attached to. In all the work I do, I seek only to offer guidance based on what I have learned through my experiences in the transpersonal world, the shamanic world, a world where everything goes, where one is able to access the darkness as well as the light, where one can experience the mystical without fear. It is my greatest wish that all of you be able to do so too, to allow for the mystical be a fuller part of your personal journey, without fear.

Once again, I turn to Jeanne, my personal guide and yours, and ask her to offer some insight into how we can access her world. How can people access your world, especially those who do not have access to means beyond their control, as I did, or just perhaps do not realize they do? Jeanne, what guidance do you offer us today along these lines?

Access to the mystical, as Jan terms it, is really only available through the self. One cannot have such experiences through others, but only through personally challenging the self, for otherwise there is no meaning to be had. In reading of such experiences one gains great benefits; by that I mean: the benefit of suggestion. Use of suggestion and awareness of possibility lead to intent, and that is the key to becoming open to all experiences, no matter what world one wants to enter.

Say you wish to get a new job. A new job may or may not magically appear, but I guarantee that if you set your intent for a new job, visualize yourself in it and set your specific requirements, that job will materialize. Intent works very specifically.

Intent can be used in all cases of desire. It can result in negative as well as positive challenges. You can intend illness, death even. You can intend a fuller life, drastic change in your personal experiences upon that earth. Your intent affects you, but others as well. If you keep your intent focused on the self, on doing inner work, on challenging the self to learn how to become nonjudgmental and pure, you are doing not only the self, but the entire world a favor. So, all of that being said, if you begin to set your intent in a certain direction, you will have experiences.

If you wish for experiences of the mystical, I suggest you begin a process of intending such experiences, but you must then be ready for what comes. I do not mean to alarm you, but you had better also set your intent to be able to withstand the process that will undoubtedly unfold. You must also set your intent to become aware, so that you do not dismiss what comes to you. You must be able to comprehend that it is truly happening.

Yes, I agree with Jeanne wholeheartedly here. This aspect is perhaps the most important. If you aren’t able to recognize the mystical experiences as such you will miss a lot. I still have to train my awareness, to find ways to allow myself to accept the truth of my personal experiences without the rational mind interfering, whether psychic knowing or experiences of the sublime. Noticing them and fully accepting them can be a challenge, as the rational will always step in to correct, that’s its job; and then there is the ego to deal with too, but that is another blog. What else should we set our intent to do, Jeanne?

Intent must be embraced wholeheartedly and used wisely, in an all-encompassing, thorough manner. Do not shirk yourself from having a full experience by laziness or over-eagerness. It is a serious matter and a serious process to engage in, this desiring entry into other worlds. One must be ready. You may already be at the point of readiness, but use practical and intelligent steps in setting your intent, otherwise you may not notice or be able to fully comprehend your experiences. But that being said, I do not wish to thwart any effort or desire for action. Take action on your personal behalf with innocence at your core. You can even set your intent for accessing innocence, for an experience of pure innocent energy, for instance, and you will surely have it.

As I mentioned, your awareness is key, as well as your attention to how your mind works, for it will pop up immediately to tell you that, “Oh, that didn’t just happen.” If you listen to that you will of course not be able to fully access the experiences that you so desire.

For what reasons can you suggest that people might want to access the mystical, Jeanne?

There are, of course, a multitude of reasons, personal and otherwise, but I would suggest that, to begin with, you stick to the simplest reason: to have an experience of energy, because that is really what this is all about, experiencing the self as energy. You can do this while awake, asleep, in meditation, volitionally. Or you can call upon the universe to give you the experience and then be ready for what comes; be alert, and wait for its arrival. If you ask for something you will receive it, but in what form you do not know; so you must be alert and understand how the universe sees fit to address you at this time in your life.

Beyond that simple reason—to simply have an experience of the energetic interconnectedness of all things—a far greater purpose of such experience is to gain personal awareness and insight, so you can understand why you are you, what you are alive for, where you came from and why, and where you are going. The greatest purpose in life is to gain awareness and that involves awareness of energy, how it works—not intellectually as so many do—but by personal experience. And, as Jan suggests, accessing the mystical, simply because you want to, is a good way to start.

I also warn that if you are not ready, that is okay too. But I ask that you begin to open to the truth of the mystical anyway, that you begin training yourself to trust that it is possible, that you will one day be ready, and that you will be better prepared when that day comes by your openness to and your awareness of the possibility that everything is available to you, the mystical as well as the rational.

Good luck, My Dears, as you challenge yourselves into having new experiences. You can do no great harm to yourselves, if you stick to practical and sober means. And please be patient.

Thank you, Jeanne!

Please feel free to post comments or respond to this message in the post/read comments section below. And thank you for passing the messages on!

Most fondly and humbly offered.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Reality of Reality

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I awaken. An abundance of dream traces compete for attention. I have been in many dreams, many worlds. Calmly, I reach for pen, journal, and light, trying desperately to hold onto the images. This is not possible. With the light I consolidate into my solid self, my ego takes over and the bulk of the night’s journeys are erased from memory. This world, the “real world,” dominates the mind, as it begins to categorize, define, and judge what’s left of the myriad of the night’s adventures.

Quantum physicists might parallel this experience of waking from dreams with a mysterious phenomenon that occurs at the quantum level of reality called: the collapse of the wavefunction. When a very small particle—which is a minute building block of everything in our world, including our physical bodies— is observed, it presents as a solid object. When that same particle is not observed, it behaves as a wave—that is, a spread-out form of energy that is in many places at once.

A wave can approach a building and go through several windows at the same time, and yet, if a scientist peeks at it while it is doing so, it suddenly collapses into a localized single particle that only goes through one window. The rest of the wave disappears. Sheer quantum magic!

The parallel I draw here between awakening from a dream state to consciousness, and collapse of the wavefunction, is similar to the collapse of our energy selves, as we go from spread-out energy beings, capable of living in many parallel states or dream worlds simultaneously, into a single solid ego being. With the dawn of the awakening ego self comes the collapse of the broad energetic self with all its multitudinous lives, in many dreams, suddenly collapsing into the consolidated solid self of this world.

This world of solid objects presents as the only real world and, yet, quantum physicists know, for a fact, that at a subatomic level it only becomes solid when it is looked at; otherwise it’s a spread-out world of energy. The solid world we inhabit is real, but it is only a frozen moment upon the vast energetic underpinnings of who we are. At the deepest level, we are—all of us—like the result of a pebble being tossed into a pond: the energetic concentric circles that form outwardly; vast waves of interconnected energy.

But for now, let us examine that frozen moment. So, what is the reality of the collapsed wavelength, the solid ego self? The magic is its ability to generate and maintain a cohesive world, completely independent of its underlying broader nature. However, to pull this off requires a major ego inflation. That is, the belief that we are all that there is, that we are the masters of everything, we are discrete independent objects, disconnected from everything around us. This is solid illusion! Objectively speaking, this construction is an act of hubris and a crime against reality. Underneath it all, the ego feels and knows it is not on solid ground, and it is frightened.

As I was writing the draft of this blog, I checked my office messages. A voice that did not identify itself nor leave a phone number, asked the question: “What can lead to a sudden shift, a sudden loss of self-worth or self-esteem?” The answer is: getting pulled into the feeling experience of the true nature of the ego’s position: alienated and disconnected. Feelingwise, all egos feel a deep underlying sense of dread, aloneness, badness, unworthiness, and inadequacy. This is objective truth and, hence, appropriate. In fact, life in our solid world predisposes us to a bi-polar experience. In some moments we need to inflate—act as if we are solidly grounded—and at other moments compensate this by experiencing dips in self-worth or extended moments of depression, as we sink into the emotional quicksand of our not so solid foundations.

If we can live as solid objects but acquiesce to the truth of our underlying wave status, we can bypass being consumed by, or staying attached to, these negative feelings. If we can admit we are inadequate and isolated, not because we are bad, but because it is the necessary objective consequence of being a solid, we can free ourselves of the responsibility of having caused our state of inadequacy. As solid beings we are simply unable to feel and know our full selves as interconnected to everything. So, don’t take it personally. And indeed, as Carlos Castaneda continually stresses: Suspend judgment! If we don’t get identified with the ego’s unrelenting judgments of self and others we open up access to our broader wavelength selves.

I operate in this solid world, every day, from a wavelength perspective. I know that, at some level, even if I’m not allowed “to peek” that everything is energy. I know that energy is interconnected and everywhere at once. These are the waves, the ripples on the pond of the multidimensional self. And I watch, constantly, for the ripples of energy upon the surface, in the form of synchronicities.

Synchronicity is evidence of our total interconnectedness. Each day, I watch in awe, as those ripples of meaning surface in succession, as I move through my encounters of the day and help others examine the meanings of the events in their lives. Everything is meaningful.

I am utterly compelled now to write of the latest ripple, an example of synchronicity that has just happened and has been weaving itself, over the past few days, into every facet of writing this blog, appearing over and over again. Two nights ago, Jan shared an old dream with me where, despite being wounded and bleeding from the hip, she was totally preoccupied by a giant praying mantis pecking away at her skull. This dream mirrored the initiation of her recapitulation. We had been discussing synchronicity when she shared the dream, which had its own synchronicity embedded in it.

The next day, the book, The Adventure of Self-Discovery, by Stanislav Grof, which I had ordered, arrived in the mail. At random, I opened the book to page 152 where Grof was describing a synchronicity that Joseph Campbell had relayed at a seminar. Campbell says: “…We happen to live in New York City, on the fourteenth floor in an apartment on Waverly Place and Sixth Avenue. The last thing you would expect to see in New York City is a praying mantis. The praying mantis plays the role of the hero in the Bushman folklore. I was reading the Bushman mythology—all about the praying mantis. The room in which I was doing this reading has two windows; one window faces up Sixth Avenue, the other window face toward the Hudson river. This is the window I look out of all the time; the window on Sixth Avenue, I do not think I have opened more than twice during the forty-odd years we have lived there.

I was reading about the praying mantis—the hero—and suddenly I felt an impulse to open the window facing Sixth Avenue. I opened the window and looked out to the right and there was a praying mantis walking up the building. He was there, right on the rim of my window! …He looked at me and his face looked just like a Bushman’s face.”

Later that evening, I sat with Jan on the couch and read her this quote. As we talked a small bright green insect with long wings, very much looking like a miniature praying mantis, was crawling on the lampshade behind my head as I read!

Finally, as I sat next to Jan on another couch this morning, finishing the draft of this blog, and just as I am writing about the praying mantis experience, Jan interrupts me. She has been researching the raven in mythology after her recent experiences of the raven. In Animal Speak by Ted Andrews, on pages 187-8, he says: “The raven has a wealth of myth and lore surrounding it. In many ways it is comparable to the coyote tales of the plains Indians, the Bushman tales of the mantis and other societies in which an animal plays both a significant and confusing role. The coyote was both trickster and wise being—fool and wise one. This was true of the mantis in the tales of the Kalahari Bushmen.”

Sheer quantum magic!

I close with an interaction between Carlos Castaneda and the quantum shaman himself, don Juan, over a discussion about solid and energetic reality. In The Art of Dreaming on page 4, Carlos writes:

“I can’t conceive the world in any other way, don Juan,” I complained. “It is unquestionably a world of objects. To prove it, all we have to do is bump into them.”

“Of course it’s a world of objects. We are not arguing that.” (don Juan speaking.)

“What are you saying then?“

“I am saying that this is first a world of energy; then it’s a world of objects. If we don’t start with the premise that it is a world of energy, we’ll never be able to perceive energy directly. We’ll always be stopped by the physical certainty of what you’ve just pointed out: the hardness of objects.”

And so, there is reality and then there is reality.

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Beyond Belief

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“Do you believe in God?” asks John Freeman of Carl Jung in a 1959 BBC interview.

“Now?” asks Jung. “Difficult to answer… I know… I don’t need to believe… I know.”

“What is the practical importance of the out-of-body experience?” asks an Italian interviewer of William Buhlman, prominent out-of-body explorer, researcher, and author, in April 2008.

“The most important thing about an out-of-body experience is the ability to obtain answers… the ability to go beyond beliefs… the out-of-body experience gives people the opportunity to verify their own immortality,” replies William Buhlman.

The out-of-body experience (OBE) is the experience of consciousness separate and apart from the physical body. This experience is most frequently first encountered in a dream state when awareness is suddenly awoken by a sensation of intense vibration that leads to the separation of consciousness from the physical body. Frequently, people report floating up from or rolling out of their physical bodies, which remain asleep and frozen, in a state of paralysis. This emergence from the body is experienced as still being contained in the body, however its movements are dictated by thought versus physical action. The shamans call this the energy body and others call it the astral or ethereal body.

This awakening to one’s energy body is experienced spontaneously by most people at some point in their dreaming life. Don Juan suggested that the experience of the self as energy, the dormant energy body, is a potential available to all, simply waiting to be called into action.

The initial reaction to an OBE can range from terror to exhilaration. My own reaction to my youthful OBE was very similar to Robert Monroe’s, a pioneer in OBE exploration in America. I feared death, as did he, and I feared a brain tumor, as did he. Like Monroe, I was cleared of tumors after neurological brain scans, and also discovered that I wasn’t going to die, however, in the absence of more knowledge I remained terrified. In contrast, as Monroe states, in a 1992 interview at his institute in Virginia, he had the benefit of a discussion with a psychologist friend who informed him that his experience would be quite normal in India. He suggested that Monroe move to India and study under a guru in an ashram for ten to twenty years to hone his skills in OBE. Though Monroe was not prepared to leave his wife, child and business for a decade or two, he obtained the knowledge that his experience was not abnormal and began his own Western exploration of OBE.

In fact, the knowledge and experience of life beyond the body is highly refined in Eastern systems of yoga and Buddhism, as well as in shamanic cultures both East and West. This has been Carlos Castaneda’s greatest contribution to our time: awakening all of us to the equal opportunity to find our energy bodies and answer for ourselves questions of immortality and life beyond the body.

There are many roads to awakening the energy body and beginning a personal exploration of infinity: trauma, sleep deprivation, drug use, yoga, meditation, holotropic breathing, Tensegrity, hypnosis, channeling, prayer, fasting, creative dreaming, near death experience—in fact, the list may be endless.

In my experience, intent is all you really need. Intend to find your energy body. Intend often; it will happen. What stands in the way for most people is the rational mind. “I don’t believe in an energy body,” the mind will say. My response, “Good! Beliefs are useless.”

Be a scientist, find out through your own personal experiment. Suspend judgment, like any true scientist. Set up your experiment. Intend your energy body, gently, persistently, every day, for weeks. Then, see what happens!

See what questions you might begin to answer through your own personal experiences and knowing.

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

NOTE: All cited interviews are available on YouTube. Click on the links: Carl Jung, William Buhlman, Robert Monroe. You can also read about Chuck’s experience in The Book of Us, p. 5 or in this Chuck’s Place Blog.

Chuck's Blog

#718 Chuck’s Place: Po

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Jeanne once called me “Parallel Man.” She referred to a certain knack I have to see the same idea presented in many different forms. In fact, under the influence of a certain idea I am likely to see it reflected everywhere for days. I suspect that this is how synchronicity works—like a wave of energy that moves and has a ripple effect on everything, at a moment in time.

This week I had a deep concern about a pending danger, a pending collapse. I consulted The I Ching, which produced hexagram #23, Po. This hexagram is constructed by five yin lines supporting a weighty yang line at the top. The image used to depict this state of energy is a house about to split apart due to a shattered roof. The English translation for the character Po is splitting apart, a most ominous condition.

The Flyer’s mind, what the seers of ancient Mexico called the foreign installation, that influences all human thinking, attempted to hook me on a doom and gloom scenario. This conjuring mind generates many negative scenarios, threats to survival; bait to capture awareness and energy in a state of agitation and fear. I breathed calmly, recalling Buddha beneath the bodhi tree as he refused to attach to earth-shattering illusions that were rapidly firing before him. It helped as well to recall the many “groundhog days” of going for the bait, investing so much energy in potential dramas that never materialized. Don’t attach; let life unfold; see what happens; suspend judgment; find out what it means—these mantras have proven far more emotionally and energetically efficient in approaching ongoing time than chasing down the red herrings of the conjuring mind.

The I Ching goes on to state that the imminent collapse presented in the time of Po is not due to personal behavior, but is, in fact, an impersonal reality, part of a death and resurrection theme inherent in nature. The time of Po is October/November, the time of the harvest. The I Ching also chooses the image of a rotting fruit on a tree to depict Po. Of necessity, the fruit will fall to the earth and die. However, that yang line, the seed, will be buried in the earth with the promise of new life.

Synchronistically, we are in the time of Po now, harvest time. Personally, illusions we cling to may be exposed, die, that change and new life might unfold. This is a natural and evolutionary process. Nonetheless, the process of letting go, of dying to old ways or untruths, may indeed be painful and threatening, as they present themselves.

I prefer the image of the rotting apple falling from the tree to that of the collapsing house. Though I see the parallel, an image taken directly from nature, undisturbed by human intervention, seems to remove the judgments we quickly place upon ourselves in trying to decipher the meaning of an oracle. Understanding what naturally does and must occur in nature first can help in suspending judgment of that same scenario as it manifests in human nature.

Incidentally, as I completed my contemplation of Po, I pulled a card from my Tarot deck (Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot Deck)—the Knight of Disks—the harvester, who with his threshing tool in hand is preparing to harvest what he has cultivated. This card is a perfect synchronistic ripple of Po, splitting apart in the time of harvest. Time for all to bravely separate the wheat from the chaff!

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

#705 Chuck’s Place: Necessary Encounters

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We are here for a reason. I base that statement not on a belief but on experience: my own and that of the many people who have shared their journeys with me. We discover our reason for being here in hindsight. We have to be here for quite a while before we awaken to the core drama we have been starring in. The resolution of that drama is why we are here.

The process of waking up to our reason for being here is what sets the stage for our necessary encounters, knocks at the door of our awareness. Necessary encounters are the cast of characters and life circumstances that make up our many groundhog days in this world. We are necessary prisoners to our dramas. This point is critical in suspending judgment about ourselves, for the quagmires we find ourselves in.

Of course, we find ourselves in, put ourselves in, create and author the repetitive, redundant, dysfunctional circumstances of our lives. It is necessary that we do so in order to accomplish, through resolution of our core drama, our reason for being in this world. There is no blame for being in the dysfunction we are in. We need to be there and repeat it as long as we need to, until we are ready to awaken to the drama we are in, take responsibility for it, and resolve it.

Solution may or may not come in this lifetime. From my experience with past life regressions, our present life circumstances are the necessary dramas recast from unresolved past life issues. This, if I understand it correctly from a Buddhist perspective, is the essence of why we reincarnate.

If, upon death, there is no drama left in this world that we are attached to, we will no longer reincarnate. To incarnate is to hold onto an issue or a need upon dying, which then becomes the nucleus of a restructured life in this world, as it encodes the instructions to recreate life circumstances that provide necessary encounters with the unfinished issue. Hence, reincarnation is the process of gathering the necessary materials, people, and circumstances to be born into, in order to relive the drama in another attempt at resolution and completion.

Though our individual dramas may vary from person to person, I’ve come to the conclusion that the overarching drama or reason for being in this world, is to reconcile total love with total detachment. I come to this conclusion from the following facts:

1. We are born into this world and must, in infancy, attach to another through a love connection or we will die through a failure to thrive. Granted, that “attachment” and “love” may be severely twisted and dysfunctional, but there must be some taste of it, however dysfunctional, to stake a claim to life in this world.

2. At the other end, we must die and relinquish everything we have attached to, physically and emotionally, in this world.

Of course, we have the right of refusal to detach from our physical and emotional attachments upon dying, though we cannot refuse death itself. Yet, in a sense, since we can refuse to detach, which triggers reincarnation, we could view reincarnation as its own form of eternal life upon this earth. This is so because refusal to detach results in repeating old dramas in new lives, a cosmic groundhog day where we refuse to die and change form; we refuse to evolve into energetic beings.

There is no judgment here, as once again we must stay in the lives we are in, with their necessary encounters, until we are ready to awaken, take responsibility, completely detach and move on. This can only happen if we have also achieved the place of ultimate love. For short of it, we are left with longing—the essence of a need to reincarnate to find fulfillment and completion.

In the end, love and detachment are the opposites, the cross we bear in this world that we must reconcile to find completion on this plane. With completion we continue our journey in infinity, as energetic beings graduated from this lovely world of special love and attachments.

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck