– Photo by Jan Ketchel
Here is this week’s channeled message, brought to your from the astral plane by Jan and Jeanne. May it guide you for this day, and through the coming week, to continue the deep work of inner and outer change. If we all do it together there should soon be a big impact. Look at what happened in France over the weekend, the intent of change brought the masses together! Our own intent works the same way. May we all use it to our individual and collective advantage.
“You get what you concentrate upon,” channeled Jane Roberts on August 28, 1980. This is one of my favorite quotes from the energetic being, Seth, whom Jane Roberts channeled, stressing how our beliefs and attitudes create our world, both our personal world and the world we all share.
In the simplest of terms, Seth is saying, if we focus on something it will happen. If we are negative thinkers, negative things happen. If we concentrate on happy, positive things, we will get happy, positive things in our lives. What we choose to concentrate on can be to our detriment or to our advantage. This may sound simplistic and idealistic, but if we examine how thoughts create our reality we can learn how to change our thoughts to change our reality as well.
If you have a pimple on your chin and stare at it, it soon looms large. It turns red and ugly. It’s all you see when you look in the mirror and you are sure it’s all everyone else sees too. You apologize for it, try to hide it, or even refuse to go out in public. The pimple festers and grows the more you stare and poke and pinch at it. So is it with thoughts. The negative ones fester, causing us to weep that our lives are terrible, that we are unhappy, miserable, lonely, and that life is unfair. The positive ones grow as well. As we open to and accept new positive things into our lives, our lives expand; new experiences unfold as the world meets us on our positive terms.
The reality is, both negative and positive aspects of our lives are things we create for ourselves. They are our intentions, brought to us by our beliefs and attitudes—unconscious as well as conscious—that we decide upon and set for ourselves. For instance, does illness really exist or is there a part of us that has created it for some reason that we are perhaps unaware of?
There are definitely real reasons for illness. Aside from obvious diseases or injuries there might, however, be other reasons for the illnesses that plague us, for chronic pain and depression, for mental and emotional imbalances. Not everything can be fully healed by physical methods alone, but a more holistic approach offering psychological and spiritual attention as well might do the trick. The entire biological organism that we are must be taken into account, both that which is seen and that which is unseen. Some aspects of our reality are created unconsciously and thus need consciousness to bring them to healing.
If we take into consideration that we are actually a whole lot more than we can touch and see; that we are energy as well as substance, ethereal as much as flesh and blood, we might begin to understand how powerful our thoughts, beliefs and attitudes really are. They are without form, so what else are they but energy? If we energetically create our own realities then we can energetically change them as well.
Perhaps our beliefs tell us that we are miserable and that we will always be miserable. Is that really true? Or is it only true because we think that way, because we have accepted that attitude? Did any of us really come into life intending bad things to happen, or to lead a miserable life? Were not our infant selves innocent of all that happened to us?
In fact, the lives we live have largely been created by what we’ve learned, believed, been told and continue to tell ourselves, or by what has been done to us. If we remain in that creation then indeed our lives will not change.
In truth, we are largely unaware of how we constantly retrench ourselves in our own predicament. It’s easy to blame others, and yes, others do cause great harm, but blame also keeps us stuck in negativity and there is little resolution to be found there. We become powerless victims of our circumstances, helpless and depressed, as we spin deeper into our darkness. In a sense we become our own worst enemies, our own abusers.
We all get to the point where we have to make a decision about how we want our own lives to unfold, and face that if we want positive experiences it’s up to us to give them to ourselves. No one else can provide what our spirit needs. It’s at that point that we might be ready to try something new. The simplest thing might be to change the ingrained, negative mantras we constantly repeat to ourselves, aborting the usual thoughts, inserting new positive refrains.
I had learned, at an early age, the devastating consequences of not acting on my own behalf, and by default the value of seizing an opportunity. I’d learned that one thing would lead to another, that things would happen, doors would open. Sometimes those doors were not the right ones, but as I grew up and made my way into the world I learned that behind some doors there were good people. I learned to accept that good things could happen and that good experiences were out there waiting for me to find them. Positive things happened when I took a chance on myself; things changed. My own lessons in creating a new reality for myself meant stepping out into life in a new way, navigating away from the old negative world, venturing into a new world of my own choosing.
If we are to create a new world in which we can all live in harmony we must get into harmony within ourselves. We must all face what might be behind the doors that appear in our own lives, all of them necessary, and all of them leading us on our healing journeys.
If we can each do that for ourselves, then there is hope for all of us. Because, you know what? We are all energetic, magical beings—every one of us.
What is happening in your own current reality? What is it that you concentrate upon? How can you change it? As Seth also said: “Your experience will follow your concentration and belief and expectation. The mind is a great discriminator. It can use its reasoning to bring about almost any possible experience within your framework.” Now that is something to concentrate upon!
Creating anew for me and you,
Jan
Excerpts from The Magical Approach by Jane Roberts, pp. 71-2.
I channel a word, a word that sets in motion the challenges and inspirations for the day ahead. We see it reverberating throughout the day, its significance hard to miss. Sometimes we post these words on our Facebook page, as a Soulbyte, a simple and concise thought or idea that will hopefully be helpful, or sometimes we post words from other sources of wisdom. It has always been my intent to use my channeling ability in a way that is helpful to others, and so I have been looking into expanding what I am doing.
The process of learning to speak rather than write the channeled messages has lately been foremost in my personal exploration. Several impediments have arisen, one being my controlling mind, which by the way was yesterday’s word! Control is different, I learned, from discipline, which was the followup word to control. Control is what the mind does, making us think we are in control, but in reality we are not. Nature is really in control. How we work with what nature presents us with takes discipline. Today’s word, impediment, naturally arises as we consider what it means to give up on the idea that we are in control of anything. The truth is that we just can’t control what happens to us, but we can look at what is presented to us as a teaching tool, offering us the opportunity to change and grow.
As soon as I hear the word “impediment” a huge wall immediately appears in front of me. I am like the little mouse in the Leo Lionni picturebook, Tillie and the Wall, wondering what is on the other side. I am sure that I must get beyond the wall. My first instinct is to get over, around or under that wall, letting nothing get in my way. But if I sit and meditate, if I get calm, I begin to realize that the wall, the impediment is there for a reason. I’m supposed to learn something from it. It might just be that I’m supposed to take a momentary pause, not rush ahead but bide my time, sitting in the tension of my enthusiasm until the time is right. When the time is right, suddenly the wall disappears.
At other times, the wall is there for a very good reason. It’s saying Stop! Don’t go this way! It might also be there as a guide to learning discipline, the other word that is so helpful as we learn to navigate life with awareness. As we let go of control and face impediments we must utilize discipline. It takes discipline to enact intent, whether it’s intent that we set for ourselves or that has been set for us by nature and the unfolding of life. Sometimes we are fully aware of this intent, at other times it may take us a while to figure it out, even years or lifetimes.
Anyway, back to my own process. I intend to evolve my channeling into a new format. I’ve gotten so comfortable with the writing format, almost complacent, and my evolving self feels inhibited by it, wants to change, to become available in a different, more flowing way. Hopefully, in the not too distance future, you will be able to listen to the messages from Jeanne. In the meantime, I have some personal impediments to work through, so the wall I am facing at the moment is not just a pause wall, but also a teaching wall.
The problem is that, as a synesthete, my brain activates several senses at the same time, so that when I channel as I have been—by writing—more of my brain is occupied and thus happy. When I speak a channeling, that other part of my brain, normally busy with writing, wants to be involved. Often it offers helpful images, but lately this other part of my brain has been interfering, inserting its own agenda—thinking, assessing, and judging! It’s been annoying the heck out of me, so I’m devising new ways to keep it occupied so the messages come through totally pure and unadulterated. It’s a process and a good one for me to be challenged with. So, for the time being, I face my wall. I sit in the shadow of it, learn what I must, and bide my time, knowing full well that when the time is right that wall will disappear and the way will be clear to proceed.
If I could only discipline my synesthesia! But that, I have to accept, is just the way my brain naturally works! You see, nature is really in control, but there are ways to work around it! Oh, and by the way, the little mouse, Tillie? She applied discipline to her wondering, dug a hole under the wall, and discovered that on the other side were other mice, just like her. What once appeared so mysterious and foreign was really very familiar, but the work she had done in getting to that place was well worth it, opening a pathway to new interactions and expanded life. This is what we too learn as we face our own walls, our impediments and challenges, our inhibitions and complacencies. Once we slow down and face our fears and desires, in the true reality of life as a never-ending process, we discover that we are right where we need to be, surrounded by the energy of nature in constant motion, asking us to get busy and dig a tunnel to new life!
Learning to speak all over again,
Jan
A year ago, during this first week in February, I was at Vassar Hospital in Poughkeepsie, New York. A dear relative lay dying. She had asked me to be with her. I got there at 9:20 in the morning. “Let’s do it,” she said, and then she closed her eyes. She didn’t open them or speak again. She died at 9:20 that night. Nonetheless, she was energetically present, in full awareness the entire time.
I sat beside her during those twelve hours, whispering in her ear, both guarding her energy and guiding her to take her journey. Many doors opened for both of us that day. I sat on the threshold of each door as she passed through. Our lives intermingled. Sometimes I was the person in the bed dying and she was guarding and guiding. Sometimes she was my mother, my father, my child, my sister, my brother, my lover. Sometimes I was her daughter, her mother, her father, her sister, her brother, her lover.
We lived through many lives that day, easily flowing in and out of them, reliving experiences and relationships, without attachment letting everything go. As each door opened we said our goodbyes at the threshold, fully aware that we had done this so many times before, with exactly the same intent and awareness, unafraid of death, knowing that it led only to new life and new adventures. Finally, I sat back and told her it was time to go the rest of the way alone. I would be present to witness, but it was time for her to take over. She had done her life well, her journey here was done, she could leave anytime she was ready. I kissed her one last time, let her hand go, and sat quietly beside her. Shortly thereafter, without a backward glance, she leapt into the light of new life.
Even so, I have a sense of her energetic presence in my life still. Though we completed many relationships in this world on that day, we began a new relationship too. Since her passing, I have continued to honor her each week on her death day; for all that she gifted me, for who she was, for taking her journey like the strong, independent being she always was, for continuing to guide me. I feel her energy the same way I feel Jeanne’s energy—Jeanne, a being who did not know me in this world, who nonetheless connected with me in the same fashion as someone who did know me well and who I knew very well too.
I hear from people all the time. People report that my experiences are their experiences, that my life parallels theirs, that my story is their story. I have thoughts coursing through my head that belong to the petty tyrants in my life, thoughts that I’ve long ago detached myself from, yet they return unbidden, asking for my attention. I wake up and find that I have dreamed the same dream as Chuck, that we hear words spoken when neither of us has opened our mouths. We often hear music playing in our house, old-timey music—a jukebox playing jazz, swing, the blues—when there is no one else in the house and no music being played. I have walked through glitches in the universe and experienced scenes from the past, sometimes as a participant and sometimes as an observer. Like a spy, I have entered parallel universes in energetic awareness and returned awed and shaken.
And so, I wonder, are we all just living the same life? Are we all dreaming the same dream? Are your thoughts my thoughts? Are all experiences in constant flow, being relived again and again? Are the air molecules that we’re breathing in and out today the same air molecules once breathed in and out by dinosaurs and wooly mammoths, Buddha and Jesus, by Lincoln and George Washington, by Carl Jung and Carlos Castaneda? This is an interesting question that has been circulating for some time now. Are we all the same energy, the same being? Are we all living each other’s lives?
When I once asked Jeanne how she was able to use her energy now, how she could be in so many places at once, helping so many people, she described it as being like an exploding roman candle, like fireworks bursting, one candle opening into many other candles, sparkles of light and energy, an endless array of energy free to go in any direction. Intent, she said, was the catalyst.
I’m aware how intent works; that it’s available in both positive and negative form, for both giving and taking. We might set a conscious intent to be more open, kind and loving, or we might unconsciously set an intent to retreat, to be depressed and angry. Perhaps we’ve tapped into someone else’s intent. We might be living a universal intent, a political intent, an energetic intent not our own. We might be caught unaware by intent that is flowing through the universe that is negative or downright evil.
As I sat beside my dying relative last year, I very strongly experienced the intent of energy as it flows through the universe, falling now here and now there, giving and taking, yet always moving on to new experiences. And so I sense that now again, as I ponder where we are now, as the world continues to progress in the direction it is going. If my personal experiences are anything to go on, I believe that we are all the same, that indeed we are one being and we’re all having the same experiences. We live them over and over again until we don’t need them anymore. When we finally take leave of this earth for the last lifetime, and our energy rejoins the source from which it came, we discover that we are not who we thought we were. Our individuality that we are all so attached to is, at that point, revealed for what it is: a myth. Our ego is not where we reside; our energy is.
And yet, that being said, it’s of the utmost importance how we choose to live our lives. How we choose to live every day of every life, no matter who we are, is critical—because our choices impact all of us. If my energy is also your energy, if my breath is also your breath, if my thoughts are also your thoughts, then the responsibility lies heavily upon me to make sure that what flows out of me is good, healthy, positive, healing, and loving energy. If my experiences are your experiences, it behovs me greatly to make sure that I resolve my internal difficulties—my anger, my pain, my negativity and my judgments—so that you need not suffer. If my intent is to spiritually evolve then that too is your intent. It’s this kind of energetic awareness that is so badly needed now. I believe it’s how we can all be part of a changing world.
These are just some of the thoughts I woke up with today, thoughts that have been circulating through me for a long time. Did they come from you? Wherever they came from, they’re out there, and they flow through others as well. If more of us pay attention to them, quell those old negative voices that say, “Oh, that can’t be true,” and just let it be true for even a little while we may offer someone else the opportunity to not just sit on the threshold to new thoughts and ideas, but actually dare to leap—with full awareness—into a new and changing world too.
Letting your thoughts flow through me,
Jan