Do not falter, but stay upon your projected path. Though interference may seek to throw you off balance, do not topple in the force of the winds that may come down upon you. Though difficulties may arise, do not attach to that which does not concern you nor seek your attention directly.
Should energy seek your own, remain balanced, aware and significantly concerned as you weigh the meaning of such energy. At the same time, allow nature to take its own course. Allow for the natural unfolding of life to lead all upon their journeys. Neither a savior nor a sinner be, but guide the self to energetic stability and, by your example, show others how life is to be lived.
Stay in balance and let meaning reveal itself.
You are all journeyers of the highest magnitude. Do not ever lose sight of your greater meaning and your greater purpose. Though you may not have succinctly defined either of those deeper aspects of life, it does not matter, for they guide you anyway. Purpose and meaning of the significance of life are the fuels that propel you forward. Let them take you to the next level.
Remember: Life is good. No matter where you are in your lives at this moment, Infinity guides you to the truth. Let it take you there. You are all safe in your world.
As you let your journey unfold, take this deeper knowing with you: You are all safe.
Sigmund Freud called the judge the Superego. For Freud, the superego is an amalgam of the significant authority figures in our early life—taken in, internalized as an active life force inside the psyche of every human being. The superego becomes the architect and active judging force that structures our experiences of right and wrong, good and bad. This judging function has its origins outside the human psyche—it is a Not I—yet, it is taken in and experienced as a formidable character, incessantly controlling and shaping the I of everyday life.
The Shamans of Ancient Mexico saw the Mind itself as the judge, an internalized entity of extraneous origin. Like Freud’s superego, those shamans see the mind as largely shaped by the socialization each human being undergoes from the moment of entry into this world.
Socialization formats perception into a uniform interpretation system. The mind shapes reality. The mind tells us what is real and dismisses, as fanciful illusion or imagination, all experience that does not fit its precepts. The mind acts quickly to reshape and dismiss any perception that defies its definitions of real and possible. In fact, the mind acts so rapidly to forget irrational experience that we are left helpless in its wake. How quickly we forget the experience of the dream upon awakening.
How dare you enter here!
The mind is actually a massive gargoyle that guards, through terror, the entry to the library of true knowing and seeing. Let he and she that transgress beyond its menacing countenance be forewarned: You are on your own! When you suspend the judge, you enter the theatre of the truly real. For the ancient shamans, the theatre of the real is interconnected energy as it flows in the universe.
I stepped out of my office on Tuesday night and into a dream. Almost immediately, a gargoyle appeared out of nowhere and embraced me, seeking my attention. I was caught off-guard by an onslaught of unrelenting intensity; the gargoyle in my face momentarily distracting me. The clock was ticking. I was aware, in some vague, deep place that I was on a mission. I had to gather my energy and maintain my focus. I stepped beyond the gargoyle.
For ten years now, I have not been able to fully recapitulate all that I experienced at the moment of Jeanne’s death. Others have dreamed that dream and reported it to me to jostle my awakening, but thus far my memory of that magical moment remains quite edited. On Tuesday night, I made the decision to go to the hospital to be with Jan. I made the decision to fully show up for death, the most meaningful encounter in life—to see what happens.
I exit the highway at the wrong Rinaldi Blvd. and enter the twilight zone. It’s dark, one way streets to nowhere appear. I’m caught in a maze with no reentry to the highway. I feel the clock ticking. I steady myself, drive the wrong way down a one-way street onto other streets that seem to lead back the way I’d come. Suddenly, I’m in the heart of Poughkeepsie and a sign appears: Rt. 9 South. Okay, let’s do it again!
This time, I exit properly and trace my way to the parking garage at the hospital. I’m met by a powerful river of cars and humanity moving in the opposite direction. I’m swimming upstream, against the current. Visiting hours are over. Will getting in pose a problem?
I enter a dimly lit, quiet lobby and proceed to the desk. Immediately a commotion breaks the silence. Gargoyle #2 is raging. His face is elongated, distorted, his eyes bulging. He cursingly demands drugs for his girlfriend, in pain, “improperly treated in Emergency!” he screamingly exclaims. The security guards and welcoming woman are pensive, seeking clarity, seeking to restore calm, unsure of his next move, seeking to avoid an explosion of lethality.
I remain completely calm. I give him no energy, simply stand quietly, awaiting my turn. Eventually, others engage the gargoyle and the shaken clerk at the desk informs me that, although visiting hours are over, she’s sure I can go up for a few minutes. A phone call is made; a pass issued.
As I get off the elevator, the sign for room 350 points to the left. I walk into a quiet dark area—Orthopedics. Something is not right.
I return to the elevator. The sign now points in the opposite direction. Though I now walk right past the room and must retrace my steps, I finally arrive.
Jan sees me. She is aglow, staring at me as if she has never seen me before.
“Oh my God! Look at you! You’re so young!”
I look back at her and think, “Her energy is amazing!”
We adjust our chairs and calmly await the miraculous. No words are needed.
I carefully listen to the breathing: I know how that works. My attention keeps being drawn to the feet: waving, jostling energy. Each time it happens, my mind wakes up and examines: “No. No movement, no activity,” it states. My perception is cursorily dismissed; my dream forgotten. But, it keeps happening! And each time the alerted mind steps in, reexamines and reaffirms its precepts: “This can’t be happening! Look again, there is no activity, only complete stillness, as expected.”
Soon enough, the final breath comes. Jan and I sit in total calmness, immediately recapitulating our shared experience of the energy body as it exited. The miraculous had occurred!
Carlos Castaneda once wrote that when he finally was able to see energy, he was amazed at the realization that we see energy all the time as it flows in the universe. But then—here comes the judge! And we remember only what it tells us “really” happened, as it rationally dismisses the magic of the real dream.
The mind persists in a steady effort to restore order, dismissing and forgetting what we really see all the time. It’s only through persistent recapitulation that we are able to change the mind, or, in reality, relativize its dominance.
“Is this a clandestine meeting?” my elderly aunt asked me when I arrived at her hospital bed yesterday morning.
“Yes, it is,” I said, and we laughed.
We had spoken the night before. She was ready to move on, done with this world, in her 93rd year eager and happy, contented and determined.
“Will you see me through?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, “I’ll see you through.”
So began a process that we both knew had begun eons ago, lifetimes ago, not clandestine in the usual sense of the word, but more like a final meeting that we both knew was meant to be fulfilled. Not only had we conversed over the past few years and weeks about her death, but we both knew that we had been a part of each other’s lives many times before. There was no doubt that we had sat at each other’s deathbeds before, prepared to “see the other through.”
The woodpecker came to visit this morning, that most determined of birds who drums the heartbeat of life itself, including new life.
The day began with determination and focus. She was ready and the mission was begun. We went over everything together, making sure that she knew what to expect as we took her off the machines, and that all of her wishes were attended to. She thanked her body for being such a pleasant and steady vehicle her entire life, letting it know that it would be handled with respect when she left it behind. We talked about the dying process as like being born. In fact, this had been our conversation for many weeks. She had called me the night before.
“Why can’t I die?” she pleaded.
“Well, I’m going to be very straightforward with you. You are dying,” I said, reminding her of what we had spoken about. “You are in the process. You are going through the labor of dying just like you once went through the labor of being born. Your body remembers it even if you don’t. It will happen, you are already on your way. It takes patience and release.”
“Okay,” she said. “Thank you.”
We talked about her diving in and swimming into the light and not looking back or getting distracted. She was thankful for an image that she could work with as she lay dying.
“I’m ready to swim into the light,” she said when our preparatory talk was done, and so began her final journey on this earth.
In a most profound experience we spent the next twelve hours together, both of us going in and out of worlds. She spoke a few last wishes and then relaxed into the process. A few relatives came and went, the priest came and gave her final rites. We prayed for her. The prayers of my Catholic childhood, not spoken in many years, came easily to my tongue, spoken for her, a devout Catholic. I prayed for her in my own way too throughout the day, the things we had already spoken of: that her journey be peaceful, joyous, and happy, that she leave this world and its worries behind and go freely now.
I had told her that I would see her as far as I could, but then she would have to take over.
She nodded, and then asked, “When?”
“You’ll know,” I said, “when you’re ready.”
“Okay,” she said, and that was all we needed to agree on; we would both know when the time was right. I bent down and whispered in her ear, giving her encouragement throughout the day, until I felt my job was done. Then I let go of her hand and sat back.
Chuck came and joined me in the evening. We sat beside her together as she breathed her last breath. We experienced her energy calmly leaving her body, not looking back, her spirit freed, swimming right into the light.
We all have a clandestine meeting with death. My aunt knew this. She was well prepared, unafraid, looking forward to the journey. Today I feel her having that experience, as profoundly and fully as we had our experience together yesterday.
I too will one day swim into the light, and I look forward to going as peacefully and with as much dignity as my aunt did yesterday. I thank her for allowing me to be part of her long journey in this life and I wish her Godspeed on her new journey in infinity.
Dear Jeanne, I ask for your advice on behalf of all your readers. You constantly mention that we are in changing times—that change is happening all the time—and I get that, but I also know that sometimes it feels like change is so slow that we hardly notice it. I know that incrementally we are shifting and changing all the time, both inside ourselves and in the outside world, but it often feels like we don’t really get anywhere. I pose this question because I know many others are struggling to get to a new level of awareness and experience as well, and may be equally frustrated at times: If our goal is to get to a new level, how do we actually get there?
Here is Jeanne’s response:
Are we making it harder than it really is?
I suggest, My Dear Ones, that rather than focus on the goal that you focus instead on the process. It is not the goal that will lead you to a new level but the steps you take on your journey. Allow your steps to be enough for now. Allow the incremental process that you might find frustrating to be all that you need to hone your skills. Do not look forward so much, but instead study what comes to teach you every day. You see, that is where the change you seek is already happening.
In those incremental daily shifts, in those signs that come to guide you, though you may miss their significance until you have experienced their outcome, you are already in the midst of change. This is what I do, indeed, talk about all the time. Change is already upon you. But do you notice?
I advise patience in all things now. Watch what is happening outside of you, carefully now, as you take into consideration the truth that fundamental life-enhancing change is happening all the time. Note that each day you are indeed a little further along on your course, that you have learned something new, that you are more open to your process of growth and evolution. And a little bit more each day is enough.
Release yourselves from impatience and let go to patience-with-awareness. Wake up each morning to a new day, for that is what it truly is, a new day to change the self even incrementally. And that is what you must all focus on now, incremental change, each step taken while more fully embracing the progress of the self. Your speed of progress is not an issue, it’s what you learn and what you do with it that is important.
Learn this: trust the process, as you lean into patience and work on gaining the alertness you may need to signal the changes you may have been missing.
Take your time to pause each day and take note, writing down even the tiniest of experiences that may be even slightly odd, quirky, mysterious, or downright phenomenal. And then seek the greater meaning for such experiences. Look at them without fear, and only with consideration for the lessons they seek to teach you. That is where your changing self will meet your impatient self and reveal the mind-blowing moments of awareness. What have you been missing lately? And what does it mean for you specifically? What does “taking it to the next level” really mean to you? It might not be what you think.
As I said, be patient, be alert, take note, learn something about the self and the journey you are on today and everyday. Be open, as open as you can be to the ultimate goal of growth.
Perhaps it's enough to just enjoy the light of a new day.
Yes, the light of freedom is there at the end of the tunnel, yet do not get blinded by it before you have traveled the road to its true source. It is not the light you seek now, but the necessary lessons that will lead you to fully understanding the meaning of the light at the end of the tunnel. It is inside the tunnel, in each step you take that your lessons lie.
Look with joy on your opportunity to experience a new day in whatever world you reside in. Be joyous that you are learning what you need at the pace you can handle. Your own spirit decides the process, no one else.
Be patient. There is a reason for everything.
Thank you, Jeanne. Personally, I learn from this message that as we change we often seek to replace what we’re missing with something new, a new habit, a new comfort, a new person. Feeling the gap, we grasp at something that will make us feel comfortable again. Perhaps we even grasp at meaning. But what I get from Jeanne’s message today is: don’t grasp, even at meaning. Just keep taking the journey; you will learn everything you need. As she says, it’s the journey itself that is important, and not necessarily the goal. Set the intent and then let intent lead the way. -Jan
Anything we hold within, beyond our knowing, we grasp at in unawareness. Our bodies cling to our secrets in symptoms and disease, seeking release in awakening awareness.
Letting go is actually letting ourselves fully know—all there is to know—to release all restrictions to the truth and let it be revealed.
To be in the full presence of the truth, to feel the full emotional experience of terror, fear, powerlessness, loss, abandonment, betrayal, hatred, and even love—the full multifaceted diamond of a life experience—is the heart of letting go. That is, letting go of the body’s need to grasp all that we couldn’t know is at the heart of freedom.
In the knowing, we are free to release the emotional energy the body once grasped at. Drained of its energy, we find ourselves fully present with fact—just the truth of what was once so viscerally true but now no longer holds emotional charge.
Sometimes we grasp at illusions to shield us from the impact of life’s inevitable changes: the loss of a loved one, the end of a relationship, the end of love. To allow ourselves to calmly be in the full presence of such truth, to feel what is or was without needing it to be anything other than what it is or was, is releasing the self from grasping that which is no more, self now freed to be fully present with the truth, freed to move on to new life.
At the heart of it all, can I let go?
Can I let myself know the full truths of self and other, and all we’ve done together? Can I be in the full presence of all that I truly feel? Can we pass each other, encounter each other, acknowledge each other, without familiarity, without grasping? Can we walk past each other, simply beings who shared a past, perhaps profoundly so but now totally freed, our energy now retrieved, fully available to new life in the full presence of life lived and unfolding life, without grasping? This is the essence of letting go.
