Messages from Jeanne

#759 Right Direction of Change

Leave a comment

Written by Jan Ketchel with a channeled message from Jeanne Ketchel.

As I observe nature in spring unfolding, I feel the urgency to keep up, to keep changing and growing too, to not waste a second, but to continually evolve. This is not an urgency to go beyond nature, but to go more deeply into it, to learn from it, both how to live in better alignment with it, part of it, as well as how to better understand life and the meaning of human existence.

Today, I ask Jeanne: What guidance can you offer as I struggle to evolve in right alignment with nature?

Jeanne responds:

Do not look too far beyond your own intimate world for the signs and guidance you need in order to learn about the meaning of life. Each one of you have, within your home environment, the seeds of nurturance and evolution. Whether those are seeds of sustenance or seeds of decay, so are they seeds of change. Whether your tendency is to attach to a positive outlook or a negative outlook on life, so are you fully equipped with the tools you need to change.

Begin where you are, with what you have. State your intent to change, grow, learn, and then allow nature within the self to guide you on your journey.

Are you stuck in inertia? In complacency? Are you not sure? Or are you simply unaware of your true state?

It does not matter what your mind knows or does not know, so much as what the stirrings of your spirit know. True spirit knowing is often fear inducing, for your spirit is your greatest challenger, confronting you always with the truth of your situation.

You may wish to blame others or the outer world for your predicaments and circumstances, but, in truth, only you are to blame for your life, your situation in life, your health, your awareness, your clarity, your abilities to dare yourself to move on and truly live a full life.

Do not turn to others to resolve or solve your most urgent matters, but constantly turn inward and ask the self to show you the way. It may help to SLOW DOWN, even though you may feel the urgency of nature unfolding all around you. Slow down and OBSERVE how nature reacts to situations it finds itself in. Observe the SPIRIT of nature itself as unbending, unbreakable, unthwarted by what comes from the outside. Spirit leads to understanding LIFE itself, and this is where your most necessary lesson is—in learning to grasp what the energy of LIFE, that which you all hold within your personal world, really means to you as an individual and as a member of the society you live in.

The world is large and diverse, and populations are at different stages of life, yet each population and each individual within those populations around the world are living a life of meaning, potential, and purpose. It is up to you to find the true meaning for your life and act upon it with energy, daring, and in right alignment with the truth of all nature.

When Jeanne says this it reminds me of what the Buddhists say, that everyone has within them the true potential to be a Buddha.

Jeanne continues:

Within your personal permaculture must you each find your rhythm, your sustenance, your signs of growth. Within yourself must you seek your guidance.

When Jeanne said the word “permaculture” I immediately understand this to mean the physical body, that our bodies themselves are our total and complete world—that everything we need is embodied within the permaculture of our human, physical form. This is what she refers to when she speaks of our true natural world. We must keep it in balance, richly tended, attended to like a good organic farmer.

Jeanne goes on to say:

Look to nature at your feet, not at someone else’s, for your personal direction. Look for guidance in your own heart, not someone’s else’s, for your knowing. Look for the answers to your questions in calmness of self, knowing full well that your outer world is showing you that it is only within the self that truth and spirit lie.

The events outside of your inner world, even the events around the greater world, as they erupt daily, effecting everything about your life, are really only pushing you to confront your own inner events and conflicts, for that is where your life energy resides, caught in conflict.

Even as you work your soil, take in the sunlight, the moonlight, and connect to your natural world, dig deeper within, for that is your fertile ground where all the answers lie, seeds waiting for your mind to release them. They hold enough energy to burst open without your controlling mind attaching importance based on old, outer knowledge. That is done now. It is the inner knowledge of the ancient self that must come forth and guide each one of you now.

If you want to change your world—your personal world as well as your greater world—you must change the self, otherwise there will be no success. Lift your heavy mantles of intellect now, the mantles of rational thought, as great and powerful as they are. There is nothing so great and knowledgeable as the true knowing heart of each one of you.

The Ancient Circulating in Nature

Join in heart-centered energy and find the answers you seek. You will recognize them immediately, for they have always resided inside you. You have used them many times to guide you in the past. In all lifetimes, these are the answers you seek. Your ancient answers, your ancient knowledge—which has been circulating for eons—has always spoken, always been present in some form. You just have to hear it, recognize it, feel your true heart’s response, and get in alignment.

Watch out for the false words and the false heart’s response. Watch out for the ego’s alignment. Danger lies in this alignment. You know what I’m talking about: FEAR!

Yes, I must interject here, because I do know exactly what she means. Jeanne warns us earlier in this message that: True spirit knowing is often fear inducing. This is where we must face our greatest challenges because, indeed, fear shows us where we have to go to really change and grow. Normally fear makes us want to run back into our old comforts, but the true challenge is to confront the fear, go through it, and find out what it has been blocking us from. This is the challenge of recapitulation, to keep facing the fear rather than retreat into our old world, our old behaviors, and our old ideas of self. If we don’t face our fears we will never change our world.

Jeanne offers this final advice today:

Turn now toward LOVE, universally present inside all of you.

That’s enough for today. Find the difference between LOVE and FEAR, between the heart’s true alignment and the ego’s false alignment. This is where you will distinguish between right direction of change and old direction of complacency and no real change at all.

It takes daring to change. Watch Nature. It shows you all that you need to learn how to face the daring self who truly desires change, as the daring self challenges the fearful self.

Most humbly offered,
Jan

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Price of Freedom

Leave a comment

Freedom is the ability to be alone with the truth. On the eve of his assassination, Martin Luther King stood alone at the podium, and, in the private knowing of his imminent death, uttered these final words:

“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now, I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!”

“And so I’m happy, tonight.”

“I’m not worried about anything.”

“I’m not fearing any man!”

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”

In the shaman’s world, Martin Luther King was a warrior. In The Wheel of Time don Juan says this about a warrior on page 120:

“A warrior takes his lot, whatever it may be, and accepts it in ultimate humbleness. He accepts in humbleness what he is, not as grounds for regret but as a living challenge.”

To accept our lot is to be fully with the truth of who we are, where we have been, and, in full awareness, where we go next. To accept our lot is to soberly realize the dream we’ve been cast in and to accept full responsibility for that dream: to complete it and dream on.

The other night at the White House, the rapper/poet Common validated the completion of the dream Martin Luther King had glimpsed and so profoundly hinted at while speaking at the podium on April 13, 1968. Common ended his poem with the following lines:

“For one King’s dream He was able to Barack us.”

“One King’s dream He was able to Barack us.”

“One King’s dream He was able to Barack us.”

Dream to Freedom

Martin Luther King did not die a victim or a martyr; he died a dreamer completing his dream. There was no regret in his voice as he covertly bade farewell. Martin was living the shaman’s code: I am a being who is going to die. Martin accepted the living challenge of his pending death, without regret. This was a dream worthy to die for.

To obtain freedom in our own lives, we too must be warriors discovering and taking full responsibility for all our own dreams—for accepting our lot. In recapitulation we awaken to the full truth of the dream we are in. We cast out the energy of those who shattered our innocence. It’s not about regret, because we are not victims; no one is a victim.

It’s not about forgiveness; there’s nothing to forgive. No, in recapitulation we release the energy of others; all must carry their own burdens, discover and face their own truths and forgive themselves for their own actions. No one can forgive anyone of anything. The real challenge is to take back the full truth and energy of one’s own life, to be with it in full awareness, in full acceptance.

Our living challenge is to discover the full scope of our own dream. Are we ready to release it, having stared it down and faced every bit of it? Do we need to hold it any longer? Is there something more to learn, some fragment not yet discovered, not yet acceptable to know?

Are we ready to release that dream and move into new life, no longer needing the safety of old illusions, like believing that we are unworthy beings, unfit for this world? Are we ready to let go of everyone we have clung to who made us feel safe while caught in our repeating dreams, as well as old myths of who we are? Can we fully be alone with the full truth and, like Martin, flow effortlessly into the next dream?

This is the cost of freedom. But, as don Juan states, on page 123 in The Wheel of Time:

“Freedom is expensive, but the price is not impossible to pay.”

Awake in the Dream,
Chuck

Jan's Blog, Quote for the Day

Inviting Recapitulation

2 Comments

Often we are dragged into recapitulation, a shamanic term for revisiting memories, by the usher, the moment of collapse of one reality as we enter another. The usher shows us something of cataclysmic proportions, jolting us out of our complacent and compliant life, and asks us to do inner work. We can also do recapitulation volitionally, by choosing to mindfully investigate something about ourselves that constantly needles us, that just won’t go away yet does not interrupt the flow of our lives. Such needles are often the first awakenings that we have deeper issues to resolve.

Not all recapitulation involves memories. It may also involve habits and behaviors that we do automatically, without thinking, though they may in fact be keeping us from evolving and growing. The following quote, from Full Catastrophe Living by John Kabat-Zinn, offers a gentle approach to mindful recapitulation, a nice description of a process that will, as we persist in its practice, aid us on our journey of change. Here is what he says:

Like the cat, be mindful and alert

“The way of mindfulness is to accept ourselves right now, as we are, symptoms or no symptoms, pain or no pain, fear or no fear. Instead of rejecting our experiences as undesirable, we ask, “What is this symptom saying, what is it telling me about my body and my mind right now?” We allow ourselves, for a moment at least, to go right into the full-blown feeling of the symptom. This takes a certain amount of courage, especially if the symptom involves pain or a chronic illness, or fear of death. But you can at least “dip your toe in” by trying it just a little, say for ten seconds, just to move in a little closer for a clearer look.”

Be courageous. Change your world. Change the entire world

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Omens

2 Comments
Nature in full swing?

The other day we watched a swallowtail butterfly alight on our small lilac bush, noting that, in spite of all the bad news lately, nature is back in full swing. But that doesn’t mean we are safe from harm. Life seems to be going on as usual and I’ve noted that people do not really get it that our world has changed since the nuclear disaster in Japan. But this is change that we can’t see, so there is little incentive to believe the truth of it. As a result of that-which-we-can’t-see, poisoned earth and food are not even an issue for most people. Little real change seems to be taking place as to how people eat and view food and this is worrisome.

What are we thinking? Why do we choose not to face the truth of our changed world? How do we protect ourselves from ingesting even more toxins than ever before? Even in local gardening, in growing our own foods, in picking from nature, the truth is that the soil is contaminated now with radiation.

In my opinion, this changed environment requires diligence and questioning on the part of the consumer. It requires that we take the initiative like never before to confront the hypocrisy of the media and the corporations, that we demand full exposure of the truth of reality, in straight spoken terms, so that everybody gets that we are in a crisis here, and, above all, that we push for the closure of nuclear power plants now in operation and stop all plans to open more. There is nothing safe about them.

I don’t think it’s too late for us, or the earth, but a lot of people may have to get sicker before the food and power industries begins to change, based on the consumer making demands based on reality, even the kind you can’t see.

The crows are trying to tell us something. This bird of omen, if you note, as we have, has been flying low lately. What does this mean? The crows are swooping down in front of us as we drive, walk, sit on our deck. They are trying to tell us something— perhaps to be careful, to be watchful. Are they swooping low to remind us of what came raining down upon us from the nuclear explosions in Japan? Are they trying to tell us that our world is changing more rapidly than we think? Are they warning of impending attacks? I don’t mean to alarm, but I really wonder what they are foreshadowing or implying in their erratic behavior? Normally birds of the sky and the tree tops, they are diligent at watching over the world from on high, but now, for some reason, they have left their sentinel posts and are flying at low levels and this is mighty curious.

I don’t take the unseen lightly. I know it is powerful energy, the unseen web of interconnected energy that is both healing and spiritually enlightening, but that is also where negative energy and the potential for destruction reside as well.

Be thoughtful, be careful. Detoxify, heal the self, treat the earth as you would treat your children, your loved ones and she will treat you well in return. Nuclear power, oil drilling, and natural gas fracking are not treating the earth well; they are harming it irreparably and our human population as well, more than we can see.

It is not that which we see that is important now, but that which we can’t see. Keep that in mind as you think about how you really want the world and yourself and your loved ones to look in a few years time.

Take a look at this article from The Center for Public Integrity: A More Likely Nuclear Nightmare that just got posted while I was writing this blog. It’s time to protest the absurdity ever more loudly.

Always hopeful and optimistic, yet alert like the crows,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

#758 The Power of Nature in You

Leave a comment

Written by Jan Ketchel with a channeled message from Jeanne Ketchel.

The world is awakening, blossoming and beautiful, showing her finery. It reminds me of how easy it is to take everything for granted, to forget the truths of our world, of what we humans have been doing for centuries to Mother Earth. She is so strong and resilient, we say; she always comes back; she takes care of business.

The recent natural events in Japan so starkly underscored the folly of many of the choices we have made to keep our lifestyles booming, unwilling as we are to compromise. We want to fulfill demand rather than curb demand, rather than change to better, more sustainable and natural means of seeking and utilizing energy. We have become, for the large part, a world of consumers who just want more and more.

Regard and respect for our natural, life-giving Mother Earth has waned, as we have turned to pseudo products: everything from our food and medicinals to our creation of nuclear power; as we have contrived, manipulated, tampered, in order to have more, with little regard for life. We want more money, more fuel, more commodities that we can trade and make more money off. Yet little of what we are doing in those regards is real or helpful or protective of people or the earth. As a result, as well, we have become frightened, self-judging, unable to speak and act on our own behalf; feeling that we are wrong to question, to oppose, to say no; afraid of the powers that control and make decisions for us, telling us how to think, act, and be.

So, as we now enter a known time in the life cycle of the natural world, as spring comes more fully to our part of the globe, we see the power of nature to rejuvenate, to grow, produce, and replenish. And, yet, I fear the complacency that may also arise as we see everything returning to normal, at least on the outside. I fear the urgency that we all felt a few short weeks ago will disappear, as we fall back into the comfort of knowing that nature will return and once again take over, making us feel safe. Yes, nature will return, but if we observe nature it does not rest in that knowing. It keeps going; no matter what, it keeps barging ahead.

Nature's alarm clock

As I wake up each morning to the cawing of the crow outside my window, to nature’s alarm clock, I also wonder what this bird, the bird of omen, is trying to tell me. This morning I saw the crow swoop down into the lower branches of a tree and I heard a racket of other birds, another alarm filling the air, and I wondered if he was reminding me to be vigilant, because someone may be tampering or harming in my world, as he is in his, raiding another nest. Be alert, he says, wake up!

I notice also that though the hawks raid the crow’s nest, and the crows raid the robin’s nest, and the bluebirds kill the moth and the fox kills the chickens and races after the cat, none of these creatures pause to feel sorry for themselves. None of them are victims. They don’t judge themselves or their assailants, they don’t stay caught in feeling sorry for their plight; they are not big babies. They simply move on to new life. They learn a lesson, perhaps; to be watchful of the hawk, the crow, the bluebird, the fox, yet they barge ahead, with the energy of life that never stops.

Today I ask Jeanne: What guidance do you offer us to specifically stay awake, aware, and alert, learning from the propensities we all have to both manipulate and destroy, as well as fall into complacency; and as we so easily allow ourselves to be taken advantage of, while we feel sorry for ourselves, bemoaning our situations and the circumstances of our lives?

Jeanne responds:

It is, My Dears, of utmost importance that each one of you recognize yourself as a living, breathing entity fully capable of survival upon that earth in a natural way. As I have spoken of before: you hold more power than you realize. You can, if you are prepared to take on the challenge, change your world simply by the decisions you make.

It is not only time to wake up each day and go about your routine, but it is time to wake up to the greater truths that abound, warning you all that something is greatly amiss. In awakening to the disturbing facts that come into your awareness, and to the things that make you most uncomfortable, you are offered the opportunity to accept responsibility for undertaking a personal challenge to do things differently.

Awakening to truths, both inside and outside the self, to the contaminations of both inner and outer world, you awaken to the opportunity for discovering that you are so much more than you now perceive, that you have more personal power than you could possibly conceive of.

It is within your power to heal your body, to heal your mind, to heal your sick and sorry soul, your depressed and sad self who feels powerless, controlled, and frightened. But you will not be able to access this powerful self if you do not accept its presence. You do not have to search for it, but you do have to listen for it.

In order to stay awake and access this most powerful self, one must quiet the voices of commercialism, of greed and manipulation, and talk to the gentle voice of your own knowing heart. This heart-centered voice speaks only of taking responsibility for self. It asks for the rhetoric of old to slow down to a hum, to nothing more than the background hum of busy bees, present but not intrusive.

In turning down the voices of convention and turning up the voices of Mother Nature and Mother Self—calm and truthfully knowing as they both are—a shift may begin to take place. In accepting the voice that says ‘I have the answers within,’ one may begin to take the first step toward truly becoming responsible for the self, with the goal of personal responsibility leading to engaging personal power and using it each day.

By accepting the fact that each one of you has a relationship with the natural world, by accepting your personal alignment with what natures does and shows you each day, your personal and very natural power to change the self may begin to be engaged on a greater level. Begin by accepting that you alone are enough, guided by a natural self, in alignment with an energetic reality that says: I am an energetic being with enough personal power to make decisions of merit and value in alignment with the energy of all living things, seen and unseen. I am enough, and I take responsibility for utilizing and learning just what that means in my personal life.

In so doing, may you grant yourself access to the true meaning of life. In so doing, may you grant yourself access to the power of nature, of energy embodied in your physical form, to lead you on your journey.

Find a means of connecting with your personal power. Take a calm walk. Lose your thoughts to the breeze for a few minutes each day. Feel the earth beneath your bare feet. Listen to the calls of nature, to the birds, so apparent. Breathe the shifting winds, the energy of life wafting past you every moment of every day. Take time to note how you feel when you connect to the sun, the air, the earth, the water, in whatever your environment may be. Nature is available to everyone in some way. Then, holding your experience close to your heart, accept that you belong to this natural world too.

The power of nature is in you. You too, like nature, have the ability to revitalize, to re-emerge, to change, to take over your world after months and even years of dormancy.

It is time to awaken, but it is also time to stay awake, to keep going, to not stop, no matter what comes to thwart you, confuse you, control you, decide for you, manipulate you and take you on a journey you did not personally choose. In fact, though, you did choose wherever you are at this moment, so do not be a victim. Be a changing being.

Accept your power to do so, and live on in a new manner. That is how you will really find your place and change yourself and your world, by accepting full responsibility for your entire self, life, thoughts, actions, and place in the world.

Welcome to a new world. It belongs to you. Don’t make the same mistakes. Wake up and do life differently, inside and outside. I say ‘Good Morning’ to you each moment of each day. I’m saying ‘Good Morning’ to keep waking you up. Good Morning!

Thank you to Jeanne for that message. I hear the crows calling again. They too call all day long, waking and warning to be on the alert, to be alive, in alignment and flowing with what comes.

Most humbly offered.
Jan

Chuck Ketchel, LCSWR