A Day in a Life: On Healing

I'm angry today!

I spent most of my life in deep depression. I rarely emerged, rarely felt truly joyous, rarely embraced the gifts that life and the universe saw fit to present me with. It was much easier to embrace the negative, self-deprecating person I was used to, the familiar self.

It was not until I began the process of recapitulation that I discovered that the personal issues and ideas I had been so wrapped in were extremely harmful to me. In recapitulation I discovered, as well, a means of release from them. I believe that we have to be ready for the process of recapitulation, that perhaps if we begin it too early we are not prepared for the tests and lessons it will ask us to go through. By my late forties I was ready, but up until then I had to use my normal habits and behaviors—and often sheer force of will—to keep me functioning and stable as I dealt with PTSD.

I found inner calmness in meditation and yoga. I used walking and running to keep me physically present and healthy, while my creative artist self kept me safe and productive. Whether we are doing recapitulation or not, such practices are always available to us, as well as many other methods of calming our minds and bodies, so that we can be functioning adults in a world that we might not feel safe in.

I believe that, at some point, everyone will be confronted with making the choice to heal or not, to recapitulate or not, to face their darkness or not. And it truly is a choice. Personally, I was too fed up with my depressed self to live with her anymore. A drastic approach to her issues was needed and so I was led to recapitulate. My spirit would not rest until I had freed it.

In doing recapitulation, I discovered the incredible power of the mind, body, and spirit to heal. Since then I can truly state that I am rarely depressed. I am mostly full of joy and wonder, my energy light and happy. Lately however, I have felt heavy energy descending upon me, weighing me down. At first, I was confused. I searched within myself. Am I missing something? Is there something I have to recapitulate still from my childhood? After much personal investigation, I detected that I was carrying the energy of others.

I am good at reading energy, open to it, aware that it’s a necessary process as I evolve. This is an ability that I’ve trained and honed, a skill that has become a bigger part of my life as I have grown over the past decade. I use it to channel, for instance, but it has become increasingly clear that I must gain better control over this energy, become better at redirecting it away from me. It’s okay to read energy, to feel and perceive it flowing in the universe, but I must not allow it to rest upon me for even a second. I know that if I carry it for others then they don’t have to deal with it themselves and they will never heal.

I’d been dealing with the heaviness of this energy from outside myself for a while before I understood what it was. I’d look at myself in the mirror and not recognize myself. I’d put on my clothes and find they didn’t fit right. I’d walk stooped and drooped, the heavy weight of negative energy and worry lying heavily upon my shoulders. My energy was low. I had lost my usual lightness and joy.

Finally, I rejected what did not feel like me, what felt so alien and uncomfortable. I shook off the negative energy, the heaviness. I shook it off several times throughout the day, and each time I did I confirmed that, indeed, it did not belong to me. Now, when I look in the mirror, I look like me again. My clothes feel good on me. I walk in my body.

I practice Tonglen breathing around the negative energy, to protect myself but also to channel it for others in a positive way. I breathe in negative energy and exhale positive energy. I breathe in fear and breathe out fearlessness. I breathe in sadness and breathe out happiness. I breathe in the heavy weight of depression and breathe out the joy of release. I breathe in worry and breathe out calmness and contentment. In all of these ways I energetically cleanse and heal my energy and I also aid others in cleansing and healing their own.

I'm happy today!

In allowing ourselves to accept that we are all healers, that we all have the power within to heal ourselves and others, we can begin to practice and hone our healing skills immediately, whether we are engaging in the process of recapitulation or not. In letting go of negative feelings and thoughts about ourselves, by letting in only good and positive thoughts, we begin to free ourselves of so many problems and ideas, and we begin to change.

We can effect change by setting our intent to do so and then practicing Tonglen or other healing methods. By imagining our bodies being swept clean of disease, discomfort, pain, worry, etc., and by imagining all of that negative energy flushing out of our systems, including our minds, hearts, and spirits, we set ourselves on a healing path. Setting an intent to heal and then acting on it is all we really need, but it is experiencing our intent manifested that brings the biggest reward. It’s easy to keep on our healing path once we experience a moment of joy, a glimpse of light at the end of the long dark tunnel. When I change the phrase “I’m depressed today” into “I’m quiet and calm today” and gather up all that depression and brush it off me, literally brush and flick it off, I feel myself change.

I have often utilized the skills of an energy healer. She is extremely good at what she does and has healed many people from the most horrific of diseases and maladies. She gathers up the bad energy, flicks it away, and replaces it with good energy. It’s not that hard to do, but what is hard is trusting that this is how energy works. My healer learned this in an environment that knew this, that had no doubt. Although we can’t see energy, it is nonetheless present inside us, being bad for us and doing bad things to us, as well as being good for us and doing good things for us. We all sense this on a daily basis. When we are happy we feel good inside. When we are sad we feel bad inside. Although our Western culture may work against us, it’s not impossible to replace our ingrained disbelief with a more open mind, by allowing for actual experience.

Everyone has the power to heal themselves, to shift their thoughts and change how they feel about themselves and their lives. There are jewels and treasures to be found in even the most dire and depressing of lives lived, as I found out. I discovered that underneath all that old depression was the me I am today. The biggest thing I have learned over the years is that I have the power to change myself, within myself, all the time. Yes, I’ve had a lot of help, but it’s always been up to me to choose to do the work.

We all have the power to heal. This is what I have learned. This is what Jeanne taught me and has been teaching all of us through her messages over the past decade. This is what the Shamans and Buddhist practices that I have studied teach us. This is what the metaphysical healers teach us. This is what the powers of the mind, body, and spirit teach us when we open up to their full capabilities, to their full truths.

The power to heal spiritually, physically, mentally, and emotionally lies within. Try it and see what happens. And when recapitulation comes knocking, you’ll have some pretty good techniques already in place to use when the going gets tough. And always keep a hint of the positive in mind no matter what you have to encounter, remembering that eventually the going will be easier, much easier, joyously easier.

Here’s to healing,

Jan

Readers of Infinity: Times Of Change

Here is this week’s message from Jeanne and all of Infinity:

Pull into center of self

Sit in calmness and know thy self. Although there is great turmoil in the world around you, do not attach to its troubled energy, for it is but the energy of the times. It is the energy that must be passed through in order for change to happen. Be calm like the solid earth at your feet. Know that within the self that earth’s calmness reverberates. That is where you must sit while you wait out the storm.

Know that turmoil within is growth-oriented, but if you are pulled apart by its tensions you will suffer greatly. Find always your inner strength and balance. Pull always inward to sit in its calm center. This is where you must also wait out the inner storm, a storm that also rides in on these times of change.

Allow the self this: the truth that your spirit knows everything you are going through, that it seeks union with you and, without rejecting anything you are going through, it seeks acceptance and acknowledgment of its presence in your life. Spirit asks for acceptance and that you let it guide you through these turbulent times, both those outside and those inside.

Constantly pull back into self now. Connect with inner calm spirit of self and know full well that you are on the road to change. The journey began a long time ago. Spirit asks you to finally accept this truth of self and then it asks that you allow yourself to keep going. The journey will not stop, only you stop. Is that really what you want to do?

The only real stopping necessary is the stopping of outer turmoil and distraction by constantly re-centering in spirit self. That is where calmness lies. In that calmness will you succeed in gaining clarity and fuller understanding of your personal journey. But it is only in continually taking that journey that its fulfillment will be revealed. And who knows what that might be!

Fulfillment lies in the hands of your daring spirit self. Let it guide you. Let it surprise you. For that is what it will do, My Dears, surprise you indeed!

Keep going. Don’t be afraid. You are safe in your own hands. Live who you truly are.

Channeled by Jan Ketchel

Chuck’s Place: Strengthening The Present-Adult-Parent Self

Meet present-adult-parent self

The present self is our conscious self, the self we have forged through the years of challenge of life thus far lived. The present self is an evolving self, a self that grows as it forms relationships with parts of the self that live outside of consciousness and as it integrates long forgotten or stored away parts of life experiences into consciousness. The present self also grows as it takes in knowledge and experience from the outside world that broadens its ability to navigate life.

The present self is therefore our most adult self, the most grown-up part of our self. This is also our true parent self, the self we trust to keep us safe and secure, and to make the myriad of decisions that guide our actions each day.

The present self is essential to recapitulation. When life events trigger the surfacing of traumatic material, it is the present self that must take up the challenge. Very often the triggered material is extremely emotionally charged, threatening to overtake our calm, our focus, and our ability to stay present and in control. When triggered, we might become overwhelmed by debilitating psychosomatic symptoms, like extreme pain. We might suddenly find ourselves outside our bodies, viewing life at a great distance. We might also become overwhelmed with nausea, dizziness, and the growing feeling of disintegration.

The ultimate goal in recapitulation is to fully relive an experience with the full presence and attunement of the present self. This ability to remain fully present through an experience that once overpowered and fragmented the psyche is a major step toward stripping the experience of its disruptive power and beginning a process of integration that eventually renders the experience emotionally neutral, becoming a significant but now non-disruptive fact of life lived.

During the recapitulation process, the present self becomes the parent we never had, the one that can hear and feel the complete truth without judgment, as we identify and release our myriad of feelings frozen in the memory. Our grown-up, adult self helps us sort through our confusions as we continue to unravel what really happened in the incident under experience.

The key to this healing process is not recovering lost memory. Memories will come of their own accord, either through triggers or intent. The most important factor in recapitulation is the ability and strength of the present self to stay present and receive the emotionally charged lost memory as it arrives. For this, we absolutely need our present self to be the adult, the parent we can trust to see us through the journey of recapitulation and recovery.

Centering

We strengthen the present self through mindful practice. Mindfulness asks us to gently and persistently practice centering and returning our awareness to our place of inner calm. That place is unique to each person. For some it may be in the heart center, for others in the feet, and for still others in the vibratory sounds in the ears. Some find that calm in their breathing, others in images of safe places or in mantras and prayer. Mindfulness practice asks that we train our awareness to increasingly find its way back to our calm center as we navigate through all the events of daily life, whether taking a shower, walking, driving, eating, working, sleeping, sitting alone or in company.

Constantly, but calmly and gently, we notice where our awareness has strayed. We acknowledge what it has landed on, and push nothing away, but neither do we attach or continue to freely associate. Instead, we gently return our awareness to our calm center and engage in calmness. And, in so doing, we strengthen our ability to find home base again and again.

By constantly anchoring in calmness we develop and strengthen the ability to stay present and observant, to feel but not be submerged when infinity decides its time to present us with a golden moment of recapitulation, asking us to retrieve and free another lost part of ourselves. Though dizziness, disorientation, and emotional tsunamis may ride in on its wake, our present-adult-parent self remains fully present and attuned, tracking the unfolding storm like a keen observer, seeing the fuller picture for the first time. The present self stands by the younger self, modeling the ability to bear the full intensity of the recapitulation experience, as the fears and anxieties that have held revelations in check are dismantled and the truth is revealed.

In full awareness, the present-adult-parent self, well trained for just this moment, listens and clarifies for the younger self all its confusions about what really happened and why. Clarity brings understanding, as shame and blame are replaced by acceptance of the massive challenge once encountered by the younger self. This is what happens during a recapitulation experience when the formerly frozen, split-off younger self is securely welcomed into the arms of the evolving present self, released now to enjoy a fuller, more complete life.

Mindfully view, listen and clarify

Mindful practice is an ongoing practice that is available to the present self at any moment of the day. We needn’t wait to set time aside to practice, though that kind of discipline is also valuable training. However, for all practical purposes, we can practice mindfully throughout the day by simply bringing our awareness to our calm center over and over again.

Each morning as we arise, we might pause and ground ourselves before we start our day. As we go about our morning ablutions, eat our breakfast, plan our agenda, go into our work day, make decisions, daydream, ruminate, obsess, we might suddenly become aware of where our awareness has strayed, gently acknowledge it, and invite it back into our calm center, even if only for a moment. This is mindful practice. Each time we do this throughout our day, we strengthen our present-adult-parent awareness. Eventually, seemingly without effort, we find it fully present and ready for its encounters with infinity, as it comes beckoning us into recapitulation and evolution, enticing us always toward greater wholeness.

From that calm center,

Chuck

Who’s Afraid of the Cookie Monster?

Cookies anyone?

Today, March 1, 2012, marks the change in Google’s privacy policy or, um, perhaps “piracy” policy would be a better way to put it, as everything you do on Google-owned internet sites, including your gmail account if you have one, will now be tracked and traced in a more invasive manner than ever before. This tracking is not new news—cookies are commonplace on the internet—but the insidiousness of it is.

From a Huffington Post article, linked to below, comes this statement: “But the policy being introduced Thursday will help Google develop richer profiles of its users, cobbled together from data about what videos they’ve watched on YouTube, what their Gmail emails say, what searches they perform and which topics they follow on Google+.”

So what is really at stake here? Well, starting today, corporations are pirating your internet activity with the intention of bombarding you with ads, suggestions, emails, and ploys for your attention like never before. In fact, Google is the wiley Trickster in disguise! And, as of today, you cannot opt out! Since we write so much about the Trickster we thought we’d put out a warning.

Here it is: Don’t be fooled by what you might perceive as synchronicity—something showing up in your email for instance just as you are planning a big event in your life—for it may not be the universe supporting or encouraging you but Trickster Google and the greedy moguls seeking your attention, time and, of course, your dollars.

This has in fact been going on for some time now—it’s how the internet works after all—but even European regulators are questioning the validity of this further invasion in privacy, apparently more concerned with its citizens rights to privacy than here in America.

Note that real synchronicities, real signs from infinity do not come via the internet, they come through you, through your deep and heart-felt knowing that something is right. Trust that and avoid the greedy Trickster.

Who’s tracking you? Here are some links regarding this news from Huffington Post and the concerns from Europeans as well as a note from Firefox that may be helpful.

A Day in a Life: On Becoming Glorious

We all have the potential to be solitary and strong...

We were driving down the highway last weekend when I glanced out the car window. In the blink of an eye I saw a most beautiful tree standing alone in a field. Now that’s a metaphor for life, I thought, maturity and wholeness achieved by standing alone and detached, made gloriously strong by having taken full responsibility for self.

The image stayed with me. I just could not get that stunning tree out of my mind. It stood there so regally, its branches fully extended, its symmetry unique, its solitude firmly established. It needed nothing except the earth to plant itself in, the sun to nurture it, the seasons and weather patterns to test it and provide it with all that it needed in order to grow. It did not hold back because there was nothing around it holding it back. Its own spirit was fully in charge.

Wow, that’s how we should all be, I thought. I contemplated my children and all the children in the world, struggling to become independent, to shed themselves of their fears and make their way into the world. I knew then that our greatest gift to our children, and to anyone else in our lives, is to indeed let them live the life they choose, to let them go.

As we continued on our drive down the highway, I noticed other trees crammed together along the roadside, clearly cramped, held back, unable to fully mature because of circumstances that did not allow for their branches to fully extend like the branches of the solitary tree in the middle of the field. Growing too close, I saw that they would never reach their full potential. They were so crammed together they could not access enough sunlight and so they lacked the splendor of the tree in the field. Perhaps their root systems were intertwined, entangled; perhaps they struggled to find enough water to keep them healthy. Again, I felt the significance of the lone tree in the field. Left alone, the sturdy tree was offered every opportunity to grow to full maturity unencumbered by others, only the forces of nature to do battle with.

As human beings, we too are offered the opportunity to grow to full maturity, to become regal beings unencumbered by the obstacles of energetic attachment and grasping, if we so choose. In fact, unlike a tree, which is firmly planted, we have legs. We have mind. We can make personal decisions and we can get ourselves up out of dire and unhealthy situations. We can move ourselves. Even though we may have entanglements and roots that appear to keep us attached, in actuality, we always have the opportunity to move into new and better circumstances. Rather than settling for unfulfilled lives, we can choose to change, if we dare.

As human beings, we can elect to live as our spirits desire. We can choose to move away from the crowd, from the restrictions placed on us by the world we grew up in and the world we continue to attach to, to need or think we need. We can choose to do deep inner work, finding our true spirit’s desires waiting deeply within us. Like the roots of the tree seeking nurturance and the branches reaching toward the sun, our spirits always strive to grow and mature. We can learn what it means to detach from that which is not healthy and, by redirecting our intent, achieve wholeness. We can choose to view ourselves in a new way, as standing as strong and solitary, as spiritually whole and fulfilled as that tree I saw in the field.

As we go through life we have so many opportunities to provide ourselves with everything we need, yet we often turn to others to provide us with what we seek. We often stay connected to people and situations that no longer offer what we truly desire for ourselves. We stay attached to old ideas of ourselves, to old fears, and old theories of the meaning of our lives. We often remain like the trees alongside the highway. Crammed in by circumstances, our energy depleted by those around us, our opportunities for fulfillment stifled, we settle for where we are rather than dare uproot ourselves and seek new life.

The solitary, strong tree, its branches fully extended in all directions looked so happy. It looked free. It had energy! Even though it’s winter now and it was cold and windy on that day that we passed by, that lone tree looked so glowingly alive. That tree looked so contented.

Who knows what our greatest potential might be?

Now that is what we all need, I thought. That is what our spirits truly seek. That is what we must all strive for as we live our lives, and we must let others strive for the same. We must find our way to fulfillment and completeness by constantly seeking our fullest potential, without attachment, without fear of being alone. For I saw that in aloneness that tree had everything it needed, as a solitary unit it was complete, it was enough.

In that solitary tree I saw what I always knew, that aloneness did not mean being alone. It meant being totally free. It meant being strong and open, accepting and ready for anything. It meant having the energy to accept all energy from outside without damage to self, without attachment because it was not necessary. That tree did not need anything and yet its energy was totally open and giving. By its very beingness, by having achieved wholeness it was vitally alive, part of the greater whole.

We must all find our true selves by not holding back because of fear of this or that. If that tree had fear of aloneness, or fear of wind, or fear of the seasons, it would not have achieved its glory. So is it with us, we must not be afraid to seek our highest potential and achieve our most glorious selves.

Jan

Chuck Ketchel, LCSWR