Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Shedding

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What needs to happen today for me to become more of me? To me, life is all about shedding: shedding roles, shedding skins, cloaks, crusts, and predicaments to reach the true essence of self. Think of a fruit surrounded by a tough skin, a bitter skin, a sour skin. If we did not remove the skin we would not be able to enjoy the delectable sweetness of the fruit within. Shedding the skin and figuring out who we truly are takes work. In my case it took a full and deep shamanic recapitulation into my very soul, into the darkest self where I met my enemy and went to battle against what had been living inside me my entire life. The process was one of shedding the fearful enemies that hid so well inside. No one but I really knew of their existence, no one but I dealt with them daily, no one but I kept them imprisoned inside me.

I continue my shedding process every day as I ask myself: What can I shed today?

A long and difficult journey in microcosm

Last week a very subtle inner shift allowed me the freedom to become a little more of the me that I have been allowing to emerge and live. This is autumn, a time of great shedding and most meaningful change and transition. Synchronistically, in the news, Amanda Knox, a young American woman convicted of killing her roommate in Perugia, Italy four years ago, was released from prison. After a long and difficult period of truth-seeking a simple reversal of the decision made four years ago—guilty or not guilty—sent her back home to Seattle, a free woman. Though that decision was deeply meaningful and simultaneously controversial, when it came down to the verdict it was one spoken word that set her free. I see this case as a metaphor for our times, underscoring the need to make decisions that allow for drastic change. These times ask us all to question deeply, ourselves and our world, to find out the truth and to act on it. I have no idea what her truth really is, no one will ever know except Amanda Knox herself perhaps, but we can all learn from her story.

The other day, someone, in a rather accusatory tone, questioned me: “Why are you so fabulously happy all the time?”

“Well,” I said, “I’m done with despair and besides, I spend most of my time with one foot in this world and the other in the ecstatic, why wouldn’t I be happy?” It was all too much for my questioner to fathom.

I didn’t just wake up one day and find myself straddling these two worlds; not at all, I had to go through the deepest, darkest despair to arrive at this place of light and balance. But it was always my choice to take the journey that led to this place, in a gradual yet intentional process of shedding the old self.

So that brings me back to my declaration of independence from Jeanne as teacher and guide that I so boldly declared last week and have, since then, experienced in so many ways. I find that she taught me well. In finally taking her up on her insistence that I could do it on my own, as she so often urged me, I find that I have freed myself from yet one more self-imposed imprisonment. I freed myself from a role that in reality only I was attached to. And all it took was months of inner struggle!

We do tend to imprison ourselves: in labels and declarations, in our student-of-life roles, in our promises that we made a long time ago. It was only in shedding promise after promise that I was able to evolve into someone who is “so fabulously happy all the time.” Although those promises were made when they were extremely necessary, they now no longer serve who I truly am. I don’t mean to imply that I don’t get sad or depressed, but I’ve learned to face the truth with a different outlook now. I take in the broader truth, the long-term perspective that I am a being who is going to die, but also that my life is a never-ending journey. I now, constantly and consciously, focus on urging myself to take the next step, subtle or otherwise.

Who, indeed, can I become today? It may take only a tiny shift in perspective, in action, in thought or inner perception, but it may be a life-changing decision on my part, in the end capable of catapulting me further than I ever thought possible.

As we head into deeper autumn now, as we notice what is happening in the world around us, such as the case of Ms. Knox, can we ask ourselves the same questions that were asked about her? Do I deserve imprisonment for the rest of my life or do I deserve to be set free? What role do I want to play: that of the prisoner or that of the free spirit? The main question, however, is: Where do I imprison myself?

Most of us do keep ourselves shackled to old ideas of the self when, in fact, we’re actually being urged to change, to keep taking the journey of the evolving self.

Who will I become today? If I pay attention to the synchronicities and signs in my life, those that resonate both inside and outside, I may be able to let go of despair, shed an old skin and release the sweetness within, bursting with ripeness.

I face my own shedding process each day as I question myself and ask myself to shed my self-importance or my fear of my evolving spirit, as I once shed old feelings, during my recapitulation, of unworthiness that I did not deserve to walk upon this planet. I take another step each day upon this earth as I wander my path, asking to be guided, knowing that I do indeed deserve to live just this life upon just this planet.

Yes, I fully accept that I am a changing being and that I am a being who is going to die, but before that event I intend to fully live, “so fabulously happy,” as is my choice.

Wandering still,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

Readers of Infinity: Listening

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What does it mean to embrace change?

When we lie awake at night, steeped in worry, can we accept that our spirit is calling us to change? When we are confronted by change, can we accept that it is not only necessary but truly desirable? Who are we anyway but a spirit seeking to evolve?

When change comes knocking at our doors we must embrace it like a well known guest, invite it in, sit at the table with it, and discuss the next step to take on our journey. We must ask change itself to lead us. We must remember that we did invite it though the invitation may have been sent out a long time ago. We must remember that change will never desert us nor ignore us. Keep in mind that its timing is always perfect.

Listen

We must sit across from our welcome guest as if before a mirror, look closely, listen closely, and question change intimately, going as deeply into our souls as possible to hear the news that change brings us.

Only in such close encounters with truth will change reveal why it has come knocking. If we turn change away it will only return, bothering us, urging us, scaring us and needling us in myriad ways until we open the door and let it in.

We must open our arms wide to change, acquiesce to its offerings knowing that our soul needs it, our heart knows and desires it, and our body craves it. Perhaps only then, in acquiescence, will the path become clear, the landscape before our eyes revealed, and the world we live in become recognizable. Until then our conflicts will not resolve. Our problems will loom ever larger and our inner turmoil will clutch at us in the wrong kind of embrace. We must allow ourselves to reject the embrace of fear and accept the embrace of a new journey.

The first lesson in becoming a reader of infinity is learning to listen. Listen without fear. Listen without judgment or doubt. Make no decisions, simply allow for listening. And that entails listening with the whole self.

See what happens as the world unfolds its beauties, as the universe presents its diamonds, and as your own spirit shows you the way.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Under the Bodhi Tree

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In a dream, I witness a family with young children confronted with frightening events. They play a game where they race to outpace the impending disasters by creating stories that keep them at bay.

We tell ourselves stories, or stories are told to us, to spin reality and make us feel safe. We live in a time of great storytelling delivered through modern machines. Economies are now driven by handheld storytelling devices competing to deliver the latest story the fastest. Who can give us the latest image, joke, and spin in the fewest nanoseconds?

Meanwhile, the post-American Dream reality continues to debunk an illusory world long over. There are no real American corporations. Corporations are moneymaking entities with allegiance only to that which generates profit. America’s manufacturing has long left its shores in search of highest possible profit. America has become a Third World country that industry now seeks to exploit for its final riches—its natural resources. All this under the story of keeping America safe, secure and, of course, working!

When could we have imagined that fracking—a known disastrously carcinogenic procedure to obtain natural gas—is almost certain to be allowed in the midst of New York’s Hudson Valley, the major water supplier to millions of people in New York City. The storytellers are powerfully suggesting that it is the only American thing to do, to shore up our economy and preserve our independence. Such a “safe technology!” We are assured that our drinking water won’t be compromised. How reassuring!

The corporate world has wormed its way into the internet, the final frontier of free speech. Algorithms, ultimately programs designed to cater to our likes, secretly prejudice the information we call for and unleash the modern “hidden persuader” in search of our money. Watch TED talk:

What FACEBOOK and GOOGLE are Hiding from world.

So blinded are we by our own hunger for self-importance that we readily reveal all our likes and dislikes to Facebook, who’s algorithms digest the data and hand it, on a silver platter, to industry. And, we don’t care! As don Juan said: We are happy chickens in a chicken coop! Happily pecking away in our imprisonment, being fed to bursting.

Tweetie Bird, Twitter, has come of age as a scientific storyteller, yesterday revealing the universality of global mood shifts. The big news: people are happiest in the morning and on the weekend. How enlightening. With that news I can now be happy when I awaken and when the work week is complete, knowing that I’m normal, just like everyone else. Do we really need a “scientific study” from this giant storytelling machine to tell us something that we know by simply observing ourselves? Or have we come so far from knowing ourselves that we don’t know what we feel or when we feel it without Twitter’s enlightenment?

We are indeed in a time of great change. The old stories are folding and we anxiously grasp at our storytelling machines for calming new stories like the young family in my dream desperately seeking to stave off impending doom. I think it might be time to turn to an old story that presents a simple technique to find calm without a story.

No CAT-astrophies

There was once a Buddha who sat beneath the bodhi tree. He sat in utter stillness, calmly breathing, as apocalyptic and sensuous, lustful stories passed before him. He knew them all to be illusions and so he grasped at none of them, allowing none to plant seeds in his mind to generate worrisome, anxious or fearful attachment. Instead, he remained with the truth—unspun reality, simply what is—in utter stillness. With this he found his way to enlightening calm.

In a post-storytelling world of fully recapitulated truth we find our way into utter calm. Release the devices, find a nice tree to sit under, go inward and, in stillness, bypass attachment to the storytelling mind and allow yourself to stay present as the truths of the heart flow through you. Allow yourself to breathe the side to side sweeping breath, releasing untruths while consolidating inner truth.

Discover true calm,
Chuck

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Jeanne & Me

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I dare to evolve, to take the next step. The reason I am writing this blog today is that my personal next step involves what I have been writing on this website, as myself and as a channel. I have been in training, as I see it, for the past ten years or even more, depending on how you look at it. I accepted what was presented to me and began a journey of a lifetime, which has led me through the past several years where I communicate with an entity and publicly post her messages, that entity being Jeanne.

Over the past month or more I have struggled with intense restlessness. All of my personal inner work has been focused on achieving balance between my two selves, my inner self and my outer self, and getting them in better alignment, fully accepting who I truly am now and being always open to who I might become. It’s a lifelong process as I see it, leading always to deeper experiences and deeper meanings. Why am I in this life and who am I supposed to become? This is a question I ask myself constantly because, as I see it, I have so much more to do.

I’ve always expected to live a long life. The women in my family live into their nineties, in full mental awareness, and I expect I will too. That means I have thirty plus years still to live upon this earth. My question to myself every day is: What am I supposed to do with those thirty years? Many answers have come through. One of them is that I must clarify who I am and continue to evolve to my fullest human potential, which involves evolving to my fullest spiritual potential as well. So that is what brings me to this day in my life when I declare that I am taking the next step on that thirty year journey.

Steppin' out

My recent period of restlessness has led to a breakthrough in my personal inner work. I have discovered that my spirit has been pushing me to take the next step in my spiritual development, daring me to go beyond the place I now find so comfortable. Yes, this is all about allowing restlessness and discomfort to guide in an ever-evolving process leading to fulfillment of greater potential. Here is the present challenge: Can I accept the role that I find myself in, as spiritual guide?

Jeanne and I have had quite a history together. She came to guide and teach me. The first thing she taught me was learning how to trust, which involved challenging myself to let in what was appearing in my life: people, signs, and her own guidance. I elected to pay attention and that was my first big lesson in understanding the universe, infinity, and the greater interconnectedness of all things. Throughout that process I learned to detach from the old and allow for the new, old worlds, old habits, old expectations of self and others being shed along the way. Jeanne’s position has been one of master teacher, mine as student.

Jeanne told me, about a year ago, that I didn’t really need her anymore, but at the time I still felt quite dependent on her guidance. I also felt that I had to uphold the expectations of others, many others, by being her channel. In essence, I was upholding an old world, one that I knew would have to change.

She told me that when I was ready I would let her go, that the time would be right for both of us and everyone else involved as well. I’m electing to pay attention now to what Jeanne told me last year, my spirit in alignment with her prediction that I would, in essence, go solo, take the solo journey as a spiritual guide.

This is not an ego thing, I have very little ego invested in what I do. I am bent on finding ways to use what I’ve learned to help others, and that’s why I’m daring myself to declare this personal challenge publicly. I’m not leaving Jeanne, nor is she leaving me, but I am facing the challenge of mergence now, moving more fully into being a reader of infinity without needing the master teacher constantly by my side. I am electing to take the next step alone. It’s what we all have to do.

I have already long been practicing this merged self. When I meet with clients for hypnosis or just to talk, as many request, I don’t go as Jeanne’s channel, though I have also done that in the past. I go as myself and seamlessly flow with what comes through me; whether it comes from one entity or another makes no difference.

The master, Jeanne, has been waiting for me to take up the greater challenge of becoming me, a spiritual being who is fully aware that she has access to infinity. It’s what she taught me to understand and practice so well. It’s what she dares me to accept now and fully live. I feel that I have no time to waste, thirty years or not, it can all go by in the blink of an eye.

This is an evolutionary thing. And I say that because, as readers of this blog, you know that we are all readers of infinity. This is what Jeanne has taught us all. It’s what don Juan taught Carlos Castaneda and his cohorts. It’s what anyone with a spiritual practice or bent on having experiences beyond the body discovers: We all have access to everything, ancient wisdom, and the ability to read the present and predict the future.

If I am in fact going to live upon this earth for thirty more years I must, because I am me, keep evolving. I must leave the last vestiges of an old world and an old self behind and find out what else I can do. I want the next thirty years to be as spiritually driven as possible for reasons I have yet to discover, but I guarantee will be pretty exciting as long as I keep challenging myself. I also know that, by my example, others may dare to challenge themselves to live lives of meaning, spiritually seeking greater possibilities for themselves and others as well.

We all have a voice. We must discover how to use our own voice to change the world. That’s where I’m challenging myself, declaring myself as an evolving spiritual being capable of reading infinity, just like everyone else.

So, in the future there won’t be messages from Jeanne posted on the website. Instead I’ll be taking over in a new blog called Readers of Infinity. I’m accepting the challenge. I look forward to taking all of this to a new level. Let’s see what happens!

On behalf of Jeanne, I want you all to know that she is there for you, just as she is and was for me. Call on her for help anytime. She has not left any of us. She’s carefully watching as we take our first steps.

Love to all of you as we take those next steps,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

#777 Balancing Heaven & Earth

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

I asked Jeanne for guidance this morning and this is what she advises for this week:

Get in alignment. Find out what that means for you at this time in your life and seek to maintain that alignment, balancing heaven and earth. For greater awareness of self tune into your bodies, My Dear Ones.

Your bodies are your vehicles, carrying all your needs but also all your issues. In knowing the body self in the deepest way, but paying attention to its messages over all others will one find the answers one seeks. The body must be the first aspect of self that seeks alignment for if body self is not in balance then spirit self will find no habitat in which to grow and mature, in which to reside and live out life to the fullest.

Seek balance

Find balance each day and each night. Find body self. Listen to what body self speaks of. Go deeply into its demands and ask it why. Do not fear the answers, for they are but your spirit asking you to find it. Go beyond the physical by paying attention and tending to the physical self first, so that spirit may take up residence in a well-tuned and well-prepared vehicle in which to take the journey that truly lies ahead.

You are all on journeys of meaning. Just what that might mean for each of you will be perfectly clear as you do your inner and outer work. Do not hesitate to be what your spirit self desires you to be. In the right circumstances you will be met with gratitude.

Be open, loving, compassionate and kind to the self and you will have conquered your greatest obstacle. Begin with awareness of self as the perpetrator and the healer, holding all you need. The only thing to work on at the moment, as I said, is to constantly maintain balance in all things.

Watch what you eat and drink. Get plenty of rest and relaxation. Find moments of quiet and moments of entertainment. Beware of rigidity and too little but also beware of too much. And yet, if you need to have too little or too much of anything, you will find that out. All must struggle with what life throws in front of them, but keep in mind that life does not wish to halt your progress, only to challenge you to keep going.

So, I say: Keep going, finding the balance that is right for today. And then seek new balance tomorrow. Eventually you will understand and know the feel of right alignment. Keep always in mind the most important goal: Finding the true meaning of your personal life in balance with the true purpose of all life, which is to discover the true self, the spirit, energy self in balance with physical self as you learn all you need in order to evolve.

Your life now offers you everything you need to take the next step in your journey. You will only know what that is and where it will lead by taking it. You will learn what you need.

Quiet daily beginnings will aid in alignment. Find centering time each day and reassert that centering throughout the day. Pause often to remind the self to get in alignment, balancing heaven and earth in calmness, no matter what else is happening in your life to teach you how to live. Always find the next best thing to do to grow. Seek that!

Thank you, Jeanne!

Chuck Ketchel, LCSWR