A Day in a Life: Retreat

Dear Fellow Travelers,

As we begin this holiday season tomorrow, with Thanksgiving, Chuck and I go into retreat, giving our energy a rest from outward flow, pulling inward to our reserves, seeking replenishment and rejuvenation.

When I first started channeling Jeanne after she left this world, she showed me, in visions of her new life, a room that she retreated to quite often to replenish her energy. I understood that this was a most necessary requirement or she would not have enough energy to keep evolving. If she failed to give herself respite her energy would simply drain away and she would be of no help to anyone.

I also understood that this respite was something we must learn to give ourselves while we are still alive on this earth, that we must learn how to slow down and be grateful for the energy we have, learn to treat ourselves with respect and tenderness, learn to give to ourselves. This is not a selfish act, but in fact the most unselfish act that we as humans can undertake. If we can fully accept that we are energetic beings while in this world, we open up to understanding how our energy affects everyone and everything around us. This is also true of the people we choose to surround ourselves with; their energy effects us. If we are to be good energetic citizens of the world we must take time to contemplate how we effect and are effected by the people and world we choose to live in.

In essence, if we take care of our energetic selves, if we can allow ourselves some days of retreat from the structures, rituals and demands of the outer world and pay attention to the calls of the inner world, we begin to energetically change the world, first within the confines of our own lives and then beyond. We find that the people in our lives become energetically compatible, and eventually our energy is more easily replenished. We find it much easier to find that inner room that Jeanne so readily enters for her personal energy, our own personal inner room.

So we extend our thanks to all of you who so faithfully read our words and at the same time we pull back from writing our blogs for a few days, to retreat from the routine, to experience nature at this time of year, to be calm and at peace as we journey inward and experience energy. Jeanne and I will return on Monday November 29, 2010 with a new channeled message of energetic guidance and Chuck will return on Saturday December 4, 2010 with a new blog in Chuck’s Place.

Until then, in energy, we retreat and we give,
Jan

#736 The Self: Your Greatest Guide & Your Greatest Challenge

Jan Ketchel channeling Jeanne Marie Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
What advice or guidance do you offer us today?

Be assertive but be plain.

Be forceful of spirit but retiring of energy.

Do not waste but do not be withholding.

Turn inward even as you turn outward.

Be in your world but be open to other worlds.

Find solace but seek also adventure.

Look for peace and calm but turn toward the storm and face it impeccably, and with impunity be strong.

Find your light and allow it to guide you but do not use too much light for then will you miss what you must find in the darkness.

Allow for outer guidance and advice but spend much time listening to your inner self. This is where your greatest guide lies waiting, where your healing energy waits for your tapping lines, and where your energy reserves are simmering.

Look not too far from the self for the answers to all your questions and confusions. You, each one of you, My Dears, are founts of wisdom, energy, and health. Ancient paths within the self invite you to tread upon them in your search for wholeness.

Seek within yet question that which is without and between the two, working pragmatically and in spiritual cohesion, find your way.

If you have not yet dared to face your inner self, use this energy of newness that abounds now to begin a new means of self work.

Begin to know the self so that you may heal the self of all the wrong doings you have carried within the very sinews of your physical body and lift the veils that hide you from true release, without regret or care, but simply allowing for acquiescence to the journey already taken and to the journey of this present time and to the future journey as well.

Allow the turning inward process to become your journey now and you will, I guarantee, find new life, new energy, new meaning and you will eventually be free of all that now bothers you so fearfully.

Face your greatest challenge: YOUR SELF.

That is my advice and this is my guidance for how to begin the process of opposing this most fearful adversary who is also your greatest lover, mother, father, partner and guide. Good Luck!

Thank you Jeanne!

Please feel free to post comments or respond to this message from Jeanne in the post/read comments section below.

Most fondly and humbly offered.

Chuck’s Place: Recapitulation & Beyond

There are many worlds awaiting our discovery, but first we must discover those closest to home, inside the self, in the body. Discovering a new world requires breaking through a barrier of perception formed by walls of the familiar world we’ve come to know and love, or hate, but in either case cling to, for the comfort of the known, the consistent, the people we can count on, the things our sanity and security can safely rest upon.

When we encounter a trigger we are really being offered an invitation to discover a new world, close to home. Triggers are ushers, potential awakenings, stirrings from the Spirit to explore beyond our known world. This is the journey of recapitulation.

To leave the world of the known is always a challenging affair. We are confronted with having to assemble the details of this unknown frontier into a graspable world. Then the challenge is to remain cohesively in it, allowing ourselves to experience the reality and full truth of it. Ultimately we are challenged with merging the world of everyday life with that of our newly discovered experiences.

When, for instance, we turn our awareness to sensations or pains in our body, and suspend the familiar judgments of the known world that identifies them as indigestion, infection, or muscle fatigue, our body might suddenly be ushered into the memory of another time and place filled with frightening images, powerful emotions and painful sensations. Can we allow ourselves to stay in that world and discover the full story or will the energy of this encounter be so overpowering that we quickly shut it down and return to the security of the known world, dismissing the journey as but a strange daydream? So powerful is the pull to stay confined within the familiar walls of everyday life that we may not only never discover the fullness of who we are and where we’ve been, but we may never tap into the fullness of our potential, the world where everything is possible.

When we shift worlds and remain cohesively in them we discover hidden treasures. In recapitulation we reunite with lost worlds of the self. Beyond recapitulation we tap into the magical potential of the self. In The Second Ring of Power on page 106, Carlos Castaneda asks don Juan how he might help a mortally ill dear friend in the hospital. Don Juan replies:

“…You can cure her and make her walk out of that death trap,” he said.

“How?” I asked him.

“It’s a very simple procedure,” he said. “All you have to do is remind her that she’s an incurable patient. Since she’s a terminal case she has power. She has nothing to lose anymore. She lost everything already. When one has nothing to lose, one becomes courageous. We are timid only when there is something we can cling to.”

Don Juan offers advice to free this woman from her attachment to this world, and her disease, using the boost of her pending death as a catalyst to enter another world where everything is possible, where she has the potential to completely heal.

Once we have learned the art of shifting into other worlds—through recapitulating and discovering the magic of the unknown self—and are able to maintain cohesion in those worlds, we are further freed to explore infinity. Ultimately, the treasures and magic we uncover and integrate, as we follow our triggers and ushers into unknown worlds, provide the skills that enable us to volitionally travel freely into ever-new awakenings in infinity.

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

Until we meet again,
Chuck

A Day in a Life: Surrendering to Healing

At 4:45 this morning fierce winds knocked down two of our large pines sending one to the ground shaking and groaning as it fell and the other into our house. For about 15 minutes it sounded as if the house itself were about to fall. I actually shouted to Chuck: “The house is going!” In actuality it was the second pine falling onto the roof. The force of the fall as it hit the roof broke its eight-foot crown right off and sent it sailing over the peak of the house. “We’re in the Wizard of Oz!” Chuck said, as it landed with a shattering crash onto the deck right outside our bedroom. “Oh my god! There’s a pine tree on the deck! Where the heck did that come from?” I wondered. “We don’t have any pines near the deck.”

My daughter, who was asleep upstairs, came running downstairs as the first pine tree crashed past her window and just as the other punctured the roof a few feet from her bed. Opening the front door we saw the extent of the damage and even in the dark we could see that it looked pretty bad. The two tall pines, 80-100 feet high, which we always suspected of being vulnerable to the kinds of winds we get up on our little hill lay sprawled out, their roots yanked from the ground, huge holes exposing the earth that had been their home for the past 40 years.

Those trees were also resting and nesting places for numerous birds and they have been flying around in frantic disbelief all morning. It’s still quite windy as I write this and I’m a little worried that the last pine too will topple onto the house. About 5 years ago the fourth one went down in a similar windstorm, though it fell away from the house taking out the electric box as it went. We are lucky that the side of the house that was damaged this morning does not house any wires or lines of importance, so I sit comfortably enough inside at my computer, though if it rains again we fear more damage. The insurance company has been called and the first project is to get the tree off the house. I’m waiting for my neighbor, a tree man, to come and take a look.

I had planned to write about the process of recapitulation again today, with the idea of acquiescence uppermost in my mind. I am not surprised to be dealing with the loss of the presence of these two powerful trees for they are showing us something that we as humans have such a hard time with: letting ourselves fall.

As I neared the end of my recapitulation journey I had a powerful dream that signified for me why it had been so important to learn how to acquiesce to the process of that journey. In the dream I was preparing to meet my adversary, a huge space age monster, as big as a building, made of solid gleaming metal equipped with weapons of all kinds. I was dressed in a tattered padded dress with a tool belt tied around my waist that did not have any tools in it, but I knew I did not need weapons. The only things I needed were inner calm, balance, perseverance, the ability to remain in total alignment with the inner self and the ability to shift at the right moment. During the course of the dream I outwitted the terrible monster simply by remaining aware and alert. With utter calmness and balance I simply shifted out of his way, incrementally moving at exactly the right moment into the right position as I watched him repeatedly lunge at me and fall to the ground, his bulk no match for my agile accuracy.

From this dream I understood that during the process of my recapitulation I had learned not only how to successfully fight off an old monster from the past but that I had also won the battle against resistance to change. To begin with, I had to learn that I couldn’t move on in my life until I learned that things could change. That was the first big insight, and the second was as simple as surrendering to healing, yet it was the hardest thing I had ever done. I had to fall, like those two pines, in order for things to change and for eventual healing to happen.

This is what we must all do, surrender to the journey of confrontation with the inner demons and find the path to healing. The inner demons may not be fully known until we allow for change and even the path may not always be clear at times either. But with perseverance, by staying connected to the personal inner journey, the path undoubtedly reappears when we most need it. And it is indeed a path of surrender, first to the most apparent truths of the self and then to the most hidden ones as well. We can learn to accept the journey as one of healing, even as we struggle daily with what comes to awaken us to the deeper self, by surrendering to the natural process of our personal recapitulation.

Chuck and I have both loved those pine trees for the shade and privacy they gave us and known that some day they would have to come down. We were not yet ready to lose them, but now we are forced to face what the loss of them means. We must prepare for a new look to our front yard and get used to a new kind of exposure. We will get more sunlight into the house, but we will feel the heat in the summer as well. I think the recapitulation lesson here is that like the pine trees falling in the wind, sometimes our recapitulation comes to greet us unexpectedly, in abrupt and forceful ways. Sometimes we do not have a choice. Sometimes we must acquiesce to nature’s will and fall in the wind. Sometimes the power of nature, inside or outside of us, is all we need in order to surrender to the healing journey.

If you wish, feel free to share or comment in the Post Comment section below.

Sending you all love and good wishes,
Jan

Chuck Ketchel, LCSWR