#700 From This Day Forth

July 12, 2010 Jan Leave a comment

Jan Ketchel channeling Jeanne Marie Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
What message of guidance do you have for all of your readers today?

Today is a day of attunement and alignment, as well as inner atonement. It is time now to reconcile with the issues of the self, to step out of the mundane world you find yourselves so steeped in and to shift to a new awareness, but also to a completely new way of doing things. It is time to act and to be different, to interpret and to accept the world from a new perspective. It is what the world itself calls for, and, since all of you who reside upon that earth now are members of the world that calls for a new perspective, you must accept that you, too, call for this shift.

In alignment with the world outside of you, your own issues —as petty as they may sometimes seem— are showing you that it is time to become attuned to a greater and broader awareness. It is time to atone for your past selves by accepting who you have been, what you have or have not done with your lives, and move now to acceptance of that which you cannot change. You cannot change that which is done, but you can change your attitude for how you will continue to live your lives from this day forth.

You must, from this day forth, learn what it means to be attuned with this naturally evolving world, attuned with the energy of your time. This may mean that you must change greatly, for there are many upon that earth who do not know or feel their own energy. In order for attunement, one must understand energy, personal energy, earth energy, and universal energy. This may mean that your attempts to live your lives a certain way must be changed, for not all lifestyles are energy giving or energy driven.

From this day forth, you must atone for your past with complete acceptance. This involves recapitulation, the process whereby the shamans of ancient Mexico instruct acolytes to relive every aspect of their lives and turn the tables on themselves as this process unfolds. Atonement requires honesty, truthfulness, and acceptance of the self as fallible, dishonest, conniving, and untrustworthy, as well as beautiful, innocent, and good. This recapitulation process must become the foremost reminder that you have elected to align with the changing natural world and become attuned to the energy around you in nature.

From this day forth, your awareness must be placed on evolutionary tactics and potential. You must learn to view your lives in an evolutionary fashion, My Dears, looking forward as energetic beings who will one day reside completely outside of the physical. Prepare yourselves for this moment by slowly and systematically changing yourselves, by changing how you use and need the offerings of the world around you and by changing your attitudes about life in general.

There are already too many people who continually refuse to change, and this is holding back human evolution. Be a changer, and help your species evolve into energetic beings capable of flowing in and out of both physical realities and energetic realities. By beginning a process of changing the self, you, each one of you, offer your world and the human race the opportunity for greater understanding of everything.

From this day forth, seek knowledge of what the shamans of the world have known for a long time. I do not use the term shaman in a restrictive manner, but I use it to include all holy people, all enlightened beings capable of leaving the physical world and bringing back knowledge of their experiences to those who are struggling to understand the meanings of their lives.

Pay attention to the magic-gatherers in your midst, to those who speak of the unimaginable. Allow your strict ideas of life to be stripped from your mind’s fixation on a certain type of reality, and let yourselves go a little into a new idea of the world. Ride the magic energy once in a while and gather some of its potential. Store it inside you, accepting the knowledge that you do indeed have access to it. Pay attention to what is being spoken and described by others, and grant them the respect they deserve for daring to speak of their experiences, for this is how you will recognize your own alignment with the changing world. By the descriptions of the experiences of others, you will recognize your own as being in alignment.

Do not hold doubt in your minds, as regards this message of change or your own experiences. Let the mind go. Have some openness for a just few moments, and see what happens as you dip into infinity for second or two. All I ask of you, from this day forth, is that you do not doubt the magic, that you do not hide from your experiences, that you not fear or hold back, but that you allow yourself to fully embrace the new world that is coming full force to embrace you.

Will you be in alignment, attuned to its energy, and aware, as this new world washes over you? Will you flow with it, because you recognize it and you can flow with its resonant energy? Or will you fight it? If you fight, you will lose out on the opportunity to evolve completely, in alignment with nature, but at the same time you will be in a good position to change your world the next time around, for there will always come a new day.

Chuck's Blog

#699 Chuck’s Place: In-Body Experience

July 10, 2010 Chuck Leave a comment

“All the faculties, possibilities, and accomplishments of shamanism, from the simplest to the most astounding, are in the human body itself.”
-Carlos Castaneda, The Wheel of Time (p. 199)

Today, I explore the value of achieving the full energetic potential of the human body by learning to breathe. As Castaneda suggests in the above quote, the gateway to the energy body is the physical body. In Hatha Yoga, and all yogas, the breath is the most important factor. In fact, yoga is all about breathing. In the asana called Savasana the body is calmed to its energetic vibratory state. This is the result of deep relaxation and full breathing, no obstructions. Full breathing entails breathing deeply into the abdominal cavity and filling the lower, middle, and upper parts of the lungs; it is also commonly called the three-part breath. Typically, most people limit their breathing to shallow breathing that only fills the upper lungs, leaving the abdominal area, in particular, unfilled and dormant.

The tensions of modern day life and the inner instincts are borne in the rigidity of the body, in what Wilhelm Reich, a psychoanalyst from Freud’s inner circle, called character armour. Reich, whose main area of focus was on the body, theorized that most of what the human race accepts as climax or orgasm is incomplete, as the natural involuntary movements of coitus are generally restricted by the ego’s inability to let go to full body release. His most famous student, Alexander Lowen, founded the Bioenergetic School of Psychotherapy to address the rigidities in the body that inhibit the full realization of physical pleasure in modern day men and women.

Fear, whether it be generated by the ego’s discomfort with the instinctual animal self or by trauma, or simply by the conjuring mind itself, often registers in the body as a constriction in the throat, resulting in shallow respiration. Deep instinctual impulses or psychic complexes may also be held back or stored in the stomach and abdomen, as well as in other parts of the body. Shallow breathing results in a numbness, or lifelessness, a virtual disconnect from the body below the head. Cultural norms that insist upon flat stomachs further rigidify the midsection of the body, forcing it to be held in. As a consequence of these types of bodily restrictions, middle and lower lung breathing is rarely accomplished in daily life, creating an in-body state of dissociation.

In-body association is critical to both wholeness and furthering our evolutionary potential in the energy body state. Many people who have had out-of-body experiences (OBEs) as a result of trauma must first re-associate their physical body to further their OBE exploration. This requires opening up the connection between the head and the rest of the body, which includes full breathing without obstruction. In fact, shamanic recapitulation, which is the practice of re-associating all of life’s experiences on an energetic level, includes a deep breathing magical pass.

I suggest, in addition to other practices involving healing and wholeness, that a focus be placed on learning how to naturally breathe into the abdominal area. Bringing awareness to the abdominal area, relaxing it, allowing it to begin filling with air while breathing in through the nose, and contracting the abdomen while exhaling through the nose, is a good first step in learning to connect with and discover the full energetic benefits of deep breathing. This can be practiced regardless of constriction that might be felt in the throat. Consistent practice may allow the rest of the lungs to fill, flowing from the abdominal area in full three-part breathing, eventually allowing the head to release its fear and constriction to this deeper connection.

Breathing is our most natural bodily instinct and our greatest bodily need. Our first and most important act is to take the breath of life. So, breathe fully! Breathe with awareness, allowing for deep in-body experience, the gateway to everything!

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

Until we meet again,
Chuck

The following books are available in our Store: The Wheel of Time under the Shamanism category and Yoga and Health under Resources.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Life & Death

July 7, 2010 Jan Leave a comment

Last week, while strolling the length of the deck in the morning sunshine, enjoying the last day of beautiful summer weather before the heat wave hit, I looked down into the yard below and saw a young fawn staring up at me. She seemed to have been there for a long time, just standing and observing me. I had been combing and drying my hair in the sun as I walked at a slow, meditative pace. I wondered if my white hair had attracted her, if it looked like the white on the underside of her mother’s tail, the white tail that went up and said, come, follow me.

I stopped walking and stood looking back at her, her spots large and white on her slender back, her ears pricked as she listened to the sounds around her. I saw her mother further down in the yard, nibbling at the bushes where the grass slopes down to meet the tree line. She was walking on one of the paths we’d cut through the tall grass back there, munching on the black caps that we too have been enjoying. Turning on her thin but sturdy legs, the young fawn ran to her mother, frisking about, happy, not alarmed at all. In a moment she reappeared at the top of the yard with her mother in tow. Now the two of them stood and looked up at me standing on the deck looking back at them.

We stood unmoving for several minutes, just observing each other. I sent silent messages that I would not harm them, that they were perfectly safe grazing in my yard and eating the delicious, juicy fruits. I sent energetic feelings of love and compassion to those two wild animals, allowing it to pour out of me and float down upon them in a wave of appreciation for their presence on this day, my birthday. I asked them to stay awhile and just enjoy this moment with me.

The fawn, bored with staring, began to nurse. The doe, feeling safe enough too, began licking her fawn, cleaning her as the fawn bucked and pushed against her. Occasionally the mother would prick up her ears at the sounds in the neighborhood, a car door slamming, a hawk screeching, a saw buzzing down the road, but she stood her ground, not fearing, just alert, aware.

As I watched this little vignette of nature in action, I knew that through all the disasters that mankind does and could put Mother Earth through, the earth and nature will continue. We are not so powerful as we think we are, for here is something that will go on long after we are gone, I thought. Here was life itself, having birthed anew, letting me know that nature will survive, that life will continue with or without man’s interference or man’s participation, that nature can go on just fine without us. And this doe and this fawn did not fear me, for although they were in my yard, eating my berries, they were letting me know that I did not own any of it, that the earth belongs to all living creatures. And I, in turn, fully accepted this, knowing that my own technologically advanced life paled in comparison to nature, for they were showing me what life is really all about.

Monday came and I channeled a message from Jeanne. When I had finished typing and posting the message on the website, I decided to do as she suggested and take a few minutes of quietude before I started my day. I went out into my sunny studio. It was early enough that the room was still cool, the morning sun not yet pouring through the skylights, and the open windows around the room let in a gentle breeze. It was the perfect time to be there because by the afternoon, with temperatures expected to climb into the nineties, it would have been almost unbearably hot. I sat in a comfy chair, settling in for a quiet fifteen minutes of peace when a racket arose outside the window.

Our yard is full of nesting birds this year. It seems as if almost every bush and tree is occupied by robins, blue birds, phoebes, doves, nuthatches, catbirds; you name it. In a small bush outside the window a pair of robins were nesting. They had been busily tending and feeding their young for many weeks. Now they began squawking and screeching, dive-bombing at their own nest, flying to the gutter above the window I was sitting beside and then back at their nest again. I wondered what the heck they were doing. They were acting crazy, their voices shrill and piercing. Over and over again they flew directly at the bush, as if to knock something out. My first impression was that maybe this is how they get their kids out of the nest, perhaps they force them out, but it didn’t appear very likely, not at all like nature, which in my observation is much more gently nudging.

I noticed that other birds were also getting into the act. A pair of catbirds flew to the base of the bush and mewed and snarled, flapping their wings. Blue jays circled around in the yard, cruising like blue and white patrol cars, their voices like sirens sending out calls of distress. A tiny wren perched on a branch of the bush and chirped loudly, fluttering up and down, having a hissy fit. What is going on, I wondered, why are they all attacking this nest? And then it dawned on me that they were protecting it, or trying to, and then I saw it: a long tail hanging down. A cat? It sort of looked like our cat’s tail, but how could a cat get up into that tiny bush? Then it moved and I saw that an enormous snake was entwined around the bush, obviously after the baby robins.

As I ran out of the room, first to grab my camera, and then to go outside to get a better look, I remembered don Juan admonishing Carlos Castaneda to let nature take its course, to not interfere. In The Second Ring of Power, on page 301, Carlos says that don Juan told him that, “every effort to help on our part was an arbitrary act guided by our own self-interest alone.” Don Juan once laughed at Carlos as he removed a tiny snail from a sidewalk and tucked it under some vines because he was afraid the snail might get stepped on. Don Juan suggested that perhaps the snail had spent all day getting that far across the sidewalk and here came this idiot putting him back were he’d started from. Perhaps he was escaping sure death by poison from the leaves of that very vine, or perhaps he had enough personal power to cross the sidewalk. I knew I would not interfere in what was happening, but I also was intent on observing it. For some reason this was what was unfolding before me on this day when my intention was to simply sit quietly.

I stood a respectable distance from the bush, trying to get close enough to get a shot of the snake but also far enough back so I did not interfere in the attempts of the birds to unseat this most uninvited guest. The noise and fury coming from the robins was intense. They flew back and forth numerous times, sweeping the top of the bush, their extended wings like knives cutting into it, but their attempts were to no avail. As many times as they dove at the snake in the bush it was not going to cease the hunt. The other birds, come to help this family in crisis, set up a loud lament, crying and screaming, a Greek chorus pouring out there sorrows.

I am not frightened of snakes but I find them unpredictable, unknown entities. This snake had obviously crawled up into the bush while the robins were out foraging. By the time I saw it, it was well entwined around the bush and, from the lump a few inches along its length, it was obvious that it had already swallowed at least one baby bird. I could see its head moving around in the area of the nest. Suddenly it swung down, a gray snake about four feet long, a tiny bird clamped in its mouth, the small feather covered creature half consumed already. Its yellow legs dangled limply, surely already suffocated. The snake held firmly as it began swinging and unfolding itself from the bush. The birds continued to fly at it, but it would not drop its prize. As I watched, it dropped from the lowest branches of the bush into the ivy below and disappeared.

The robin parents continued to wail and express their deep sorrow at the invasion of their nest, their children taken by this creature of nature, death coming unexpectedly. The other birds soon disappeared and only the stunned robins remained. I sent energetic sympathy to these two birds, feeling their grief, as they cocked their heads in disbelief, keening and pining for their young. And yet I knew that this too was nature in action, the other side of life.

Death is as natural as birth; it is part of the natural order of things. Indiscriminately selecting, coming like the snake in the grass, it will spare none of us. This is what modern man has chosen to ignore, that death is a natural part of life. We must all take our definitive journey as the seers call it, but I feel we have lost our reverence for and our curiosity about its transformational process, and we have forgotten that we are as innocent as those baby birds in the nest, all of us.

Eventually, the mother robin returned to the bush. When I peaked in at her she was sitting perched on the edge, guarding the last of her babies. She voiced a gentle protest at my intrusion, though by now she knew I would not harm her. On Tuesday, each time I looked into the bush, she no longer feared me, but sat silently, just the thing I intended to do before death came so unexpectedly to my yard. I knew she was waiting for two things, for her young fledgling to mature enough so it could leave the nest, and she was also waiting for the snake, for it would soon be hungry again. Death will come again.

If you wish, feel free to respond in the comment section below.

Wishing you all a good week,
Jan

NOTE: The book mentioned in this blog is available for purchase through our Store.

Messages from Jeanne

#698 The Energy of Change is Full of Love

July 5, 2010 Jan Leave a comment

Jan Ketchel channeling Jeanne Marie Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
What message do you have for us today, energetically and practically speaking?

On an energetic level, this is a time for inner work, recapitulation, and seeking balance. It is a time of great forces converging and aligning in preparation for shift to come.

It feels like we’ve already had some big shifts lately. Are there more to come?

Yes. I have spoken of this as a time of change. It is here, and when such energy is present there is the propensity but also the certainty of more change, for once the energetic charge has been fired the snowball effect is in play. I foresee great change still to come. This I see outside of you, but you know that this will also be what you are confronted with inside you, right?

Yes, it seems to be how it goes and, yes, it does seem to be a good time for inner work. It’s been easier to see and understand how I, personally, have projected inner issues onto the world. My inner process has really been progressing well; at least that’s how it feels. I hope your other readers are also feeling the same progress as they take their own inner journeys.

This is a time of recapitulation, and by that I mean that the energy, which asks for inner turning, is highly present, accessible, and engaging, but it is also energy full of kindness and gentleness. What may feel like pushy energy is full of love, My Dear Ones, and if you elect to engage it in recapitulation you will have some very interesting inner journeys. It is energy of protection and it covets the inner working process. If thus engaged, you will find that your inner work will not only be allowed, but time will be presented for it, though it is up to you to elect to do the inner work over some other enticement.

So, what do you offer us on a practical level?

I highly recommend that you, first, remain aware that this is inner work time. Secondly, look for the moments that will be granted so that you may spend time alone, reading, writing, musing in nature, or simply sitting in quietude. Thirdly, look outside of you for what is happening inside of you and turn that projection inward.

You understand what I mean by this, right? For instance, if you think someone outside of you is acting irrationally or abruptly, do not spend too much time pondering that person’s issues, but instead ask the self, where and how do I act irrationally? Where and how to I act abruptly? Is it in relation to others, to ideas, or thoughts? Am I too dismissive of the issues of others, too afraid to make them my own?

You see, My Dears, you always have new issues to address. No matter how well you think you are doing, there is always something else to address. You might find that your outer world is flowing pretty well, is nicely balanced, and that you are in synch with the energy. But I hazard that if you go innerly, to a new deeper level, that you will run up against something that makes you uncomfortable or curious about the self. Right, Jan?

Well yes, Jeanne. I always find that I can go deeper, even if I think I’m doing pretty well. And even though I’ve done a pretty thorough recapitulation there is always something else that comes up, something that I may not be aware of until I meet it outside of me.

Yes, that is what happens. As you live your life, as you go out into the world each day you are bound to bump up against something that will raise your ire, your sense of dignity, your judgments, and confrontations with the choices you make each day.

So, how do we deal with what comes up?

As I said, take steps to calm your outer reaction after fully accepting that it is how you are feeling, by owning that feeling in an outerly projected sense and then turning it inward. For instance, you may get angry about something and that in itself must be accepted by you. But do not stay in anger. Do not allow it to consume you, but instead consume it. In a metaphorical sense, you could allow it to seep into your deeper self, to the fearful self, and ask this aspect of self to confront it. What is it that is causing this anger to boil up? What old issue is being prodded to come forth now so that you may resolve it?

If you attempt to spew anger outwardly it will remain outwardly present, perhaps even infecting others, as well as the balance of your day. But if you bravely face its old familiarity inside you, you may find that it relates to something that happened to you a long time ago. This is the inner work that will be aided and abetted by the energy of now. And, yes, you can and should use this energy of change to do your inner work and change yourself!

Do not be afraid of what lies inside you! Most likely you will find a small child in there just waiting to be rediscovered and released of all the old buried feelings. That’s all; it’s just you in there. And you know that you are just afraid of what you might encounter, when in fact you will find you are just innocence itself. Can you allow yourself to be innocent? That is my final question.

Chuck's Blog

#697 Chuck’s Place: Independent Action

July 3, 2010 Chuck 2 Comments

In the last year of his life, Carl Jung took on the project of expressing his core ideas and discoveries at a level comprehensible by the general public in his final book Man and his symbols. Ten days before his fatal illness, he completed his chapter to this work, which includes chapters written by his closest associates. In what were perhaps some of Jung’s final written words, he states:

“As any change must begin somewhere, it is the single individual who will experience it and carry it through. The change must indeed begin with an individual; it might be anyone of us. Nobody can afford to look around and to wait for somebody else to do what he is loath to do himself. But since nobody seems to know what to do, it might be worthwhile for each of us to ask himself whether by any chance his or her unconscious may know something that will help us. Certainly the conscious mind seems unable to do anything useful in this respect. Man today is painfully aware of the fact that neither his great religions nor his various philosophies seem to provide him with those powerful animating ideas that would give him the security he needs in face of the present condition of the world.” (p. 101)

Last week in my blog, Why BP?, I suggested that the core conflict expressed by the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico is the battle between two primary instincts: hunger and self-preservation. Reason, the hallmark of consciousness, is colluding with and actually possessed by the unchecked, insatiable greed of the out-of-control hunger instinct in all of mankind. Esther Harding states, reflecting upon the hunger instinct, in her book Psychic Energy:

Modern man has sought to compass the whole of life with his conscious intellect, only to find that the power of the irrational life force has not been overcome, but has retreated to the unconscious and from that hidden stronghold exerts a powerful and often baneful influence on his life. The power of his primitive greed bursts forth in wars of aggression and manifests itself in asocial business practices, while the exclusive concern with outer satisfactions leaves his soul hungry and starving. For man cannot live satisfactorily, cannot be whole, unless he is living in harmony with the unconscious roots of his being. Yet, how can he be at one with himself while the barbaric impulses of unredeemed instinct continue to hold sway in the unconscious? It is just because the ideals we hold up before us do not represent the truth about mankind that the hopes of peace and progress they embody so constantly elude us. Yet we fear to admit this obvious fact and to relax our efforts at self-improvement, lest we fall again into chaos and barbarism.” (p. 84)

Bringing Jung’s challenge to the “single individual” to change and solve the problem of greed, requires that each and every one of us identify our own relation to greed within our psyches and in daily functioning. If we understand hunger broadly, as the instinct to consume, especially in great quantity, we might automatically associate it with the addictions: food, drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, shopping, etc. I suggest that we extend this energetically and ask ourselves, how do we spend the bulk of our energy? From this vantage point, we might ironically look at an obsessional disorder, such as anorexia, as an out of control hunger instinct, considering how much life energy is consumed by not eating.

We might view a fixation on reading as an insatiable hunger to consume words, facts, or fantasies to the exclusion of all other needs in life. Similarly, the insatiable attachment to constantly checking facebook, email, text messages, etc, is an addiction to consuming electronic connection, a barbaric dominance of the hunger instinct. We might view preoccupation with our physical appearance as a greedy monopoly on our daily energy for life. We could view dominating habits of complaining, being cynical, or judging, as acts of avarice feasting upon our energetic storehouse.

The possibilities for greed in our daily functioning are endless, and it requires conscious reflection on our part to take an honest energy inventory and face the truth of how we allow greed to dominate and control our lives. If we can reel in our attention from the greedy mirrors around us and tackle the shadow of our own greed, we can energetically change the world. This is the essence of Jung’s final guidance to us in how to change the world, which he acknowledged was in a very dangerous place. From the same chapter in Man and his symbols, he writes:

“Our intellect has created a new world that dominates nature, and has populated it with monstrous machines. The latter are so indubitably useful that we cannot see even a possibility of getting rid of them or our subservience to them. Man is bound to follow the adventurous promptings of his scientific and inventive mind and to admire himself for his splendid achievements. At the same time, his genius shows the uncanny tendency to invent things that become more and more dangerous, because they represent better and better means for wholesale suicide.” (p. 101)

As I stated last week, Mother Nature has taken the lead to restore balance now, and there is inevitable and obvious destruction in this healing process. If we can cap the greed in our own lives, we put ourselves in alignment with nature’s cure, and change the world!