Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Just Passing Through—With Awareness

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“Do the sweeping breath Jan,” I suggested as we stared out at the ocean. “This is the last time we will ever be here. Take it in and release it.”

There is so much to this world, more than we can possibly experience in a lifetime. Better to be fully present, soaking it in and releasing it as we move along.

Only the energetic flow remains.

When we first arrived at the beach, we went to Edgar Cayce’s Atlantic University. We walked through the meditation gardens brimming with energy. We slowly walked the labyrinth in the heat of the noonday sun. Finally we sat in the coolness of the meditation room overlooking the sea, immediately drawn into the vortex of energy present in that room from all the beings who had preceded us.

Sometimes we are so moved by the beauty around us, drawn to the energy, that we immediately want to bottle it, to hold onto it. Before we left the beach I felt drawn to return to that meditation room, but it was time to leave, never to return.

We moved on to our cabin on the mountain. The moment we arrived we wanted another night, another attempt to bottle life. I called Chuck, the proprietor.

“Sorry Chuck,” he replied warmly, “I’d love to accommodate you, but it was just booked this morning.”

I knew, in that moment, that we were being reminded that we are beings who are going to die. Our stay here is but a limited engagement, no bargaining for more time. The message: Be fully present, fill your cup of experience to the brim, but don’t try to bottle life.

As I write these words, the sound of infinity—a thousand cicadas—wakes up. They announce: “Wake up! Take the journey NOW. Infinity is NOW!”

Before we arrived on the mountain we spent a night at a hot spring only to find a beautiful dead moth lying by the hot spring of life. When we came to our lovely cabin here on the mountain another beautiful moth lay dead on the floor by the jacuzzi. When we set out to hike the mountain we were greeted by the fallen wings of two luna moths resting on the trail, an energetic stream of movement. Signs of infinity: moths in repose and the energetic springs of life side by side. These are reminders to stay alert, remain aware, take nothing for granted, soak it in, release it and accept that we are just passing through.

With deep affection, I hold you in my awareness as I move along through infinite moments of awareness.

Chuck

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: In Nature

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I sit in stillness. I sit in nature. I breathe in the colored threads of the morning sun’s energy. I listen to the sounds of nature. Nothing overpowers. Nothing stands out. Nature sings in harmony. The Peewee calls, the woodpecker knocks on the trunk of a tall tree, a dog barks, a lover asks a gentle question. The cicadas vibrate the air, merging their energy and sending it along the same interconnected threads that I breathe in. I quietly take it all in. I am peaceful in this moment.

I am innerly focused, far from the world’s wars, conflicts, worries and troubles. In this moment of harmony with nature I forget that there are political, financial, social, environmental issues, that there is illness and disease, that there are struggles and hardships aplenty. In this moment I am at peace.

It is a day for me to stay connected in this way, to let the world go for a few hours, to listen to the sounds around me and simply be harmoniously present. It really isn’t that hard to do once the intent is set.

As I sit in the warm morning light I notice that all is well, that Mother Nature likes us to be this way, in harmony, part of the symphony that sings, chirps, breathes together. This is where we should be every day of our lives, but how can we when there is so much else to worry about, tend to, play along with.

I feel the urgent call of Mother Nature, asking us to more fully accept the truth of our existence on earth, that we are just one of the harmonizers. We seek to sing our solos, but in reality when we are too self-centered and demanding we interrupt the natural balance, the natural harmony. In reality we are just one in a chorus of all the voices of nature.

In her book, Silent Spring, Rachel Carson wrote: “The history of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings. To a large extent, the physical form and the habits of the earth’s vegetation and its animal life have been molded by the environment. Considering the whole span of earthly time, the opposite effect, in which life actually modifies its surroundings, has been relatively slight. Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species–man–acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.”

Take a day, or even two or three, in nature. Just be. Just be part of it, in harmony.

Thanks for reading,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

#767 Visitors of Awareness

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Here is a message from Jeanne channeled by Jan as we go into a new week, as we struggle to remain aware that we are more than what we appear to be, that we are all more than meets the eye. On this day Jeanne asks us to remember that we have two sides to ourselves, that we are inner and outer beings. In awareness of this will our journeys be more fulfilling and balanced. It’s often hard to be innerly aligned while we are so outerly focused. Today’s message reminds us of the greater need to accomplish a new level in this struggle for balance, for ourselves and for our environment.

Here is what Jeanne says:

Busy Bee

Be aware now of nature’s wish for fulfillment and for sustenance and respect for all beings to become aware. Be now as nature is, as Mother Earth, more fully accepting your place of learning upon her earthen floor. Use your time there wisely in alertness, studying more closely all that she provides and shows you on a daily basis for she holds everything you need for your outer self while you hold everything within that you need for your inner self.

This is most important now: arrive at unity within and without. Become more aware and more balanced each day in yourself and in your world. I cannot stress this more. The world needs you and you need it.

Be sensitive beings, good visitors of awareness, respectfully treading upon your planet environment and you will find all that you need.

Thank you Jeanne!

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Discovering Intent

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Long ago, I was drawn to the adventures, practices and cognitive world of the Seers of Ancient Mexico. The energetic wave of that once closed world was reformatting to be of relevance to a new era as ushered in by the published works of Carlos Castaneda in the 1960s. The value of the tools from that ancient world are critical as we navigate our now rapidly changing world.

I have little use for words such as trust or belief unless they are based upon personal experience that supports them. At heart, I am a scientist. I cannot know something unless I know it through actual experience. Nonetheless, as Carlos Castaneda suggested in his thirtieth anniversary commentary in The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, our intellectual allegiance—what I would call resonance—sets off powerful undercurrents that effect a transformation in our perception and experience of life.

In simpler terms, concepts, even words themselves, can energetically transform us, but we must discover this for ourselves. What generally inhibits this transforming experience is the allegiances we bear based on our socialization.

If our socialization tells us that it is irrational to believe that stating our intent will lead to a major change, we simply won’t do it. In fact, we might instead spend our energy vigorously defending the absurdity of such a practice. From my own experience, however, I know that stating an intent is the most powerful tool of change.

When someone approaches me, in my formal role as an agent of change, we explore their intent to heal or change. I explain that that intent will manifest. It is not my intuitive powers that will guide the journey; my role is to track the energy of that intent. Intent is the guide.

Often my initial task is to ask my client to suspend judgement and experiment with this working hypothesis: everything they need they have within. Intent is now steering the process. Let’s gather the data and, like true scientists, see what happens.

The data comes in the form of synchronicities, dreams, encounters of everyday life, intuitions, thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, long forgotten experiences, etc. Everything is potentially meaningful; all is gathered and examined.

What we discover, over and over, is that intent is indeed an intelligent force that leads to its fulfillment. We cannot predetermine the course that journey will take; our challenge is to track it and stay on its unfolding trail unencumbered by doubt and worry.

Intent has proven to be the most valuable tool to effect deep healing and transformation. So simple, so accessible, but requiring of a truly scientific attitude of experimentation to discover: INTENT!

Calling intent,
Chuck

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Now is Now

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I write again about the process of recapitulation, the process that has changed my own life from one of fear—bound by feelings of inadequacy leading to resistance to fully experiencing what life has to offer—to one of fully embracing life.

Recapitulation frees us from the promises and vows we made as children, whether consciously decided upon or placed upon us by others. In my own case, as an extremely sensitive and withdrawn child with little self-esteem, if anyone told me something I immediately believed it and took it on. I was told that I could not sing and so I rarely opened my mouth, when in fact I have a nice singing voice. I was told I could not dance and so I rarely danced, when in fact I can indeed dance in my own fashion. In Taisha Abelar’s book The Sorcerer’s Crossing, her teacher Clara says the following:

“…as children, we often make vows and then become bound by those vows, even though we can no longer remember making them.”

“Such impulsive pledges can cost us our freedom…”

“…vows, oaths and promises bind our intent, so that from then on, our actions, feelings and thoughts are consistently directed toward fulfilling or maintaining those commitments regardless of whether or not we remember having made them.”

If we ponder where we first heard some of the beliefs we hold so tightly to about ourselves and question their truths, we may find that they are indeed true statements that we must accept in order to move on in life or that they are far from true. The process of recapitulation enables us to gain clarity, so that we can move on, freed of ideas of the self that hold us back from leading fulfilling lives.

Taisha goes on to say that “[Clara] advised me to review, during the recapitulation, all the promises I had ever made in my lifetime, especially the ones made in haste or ignorance or faulty judgement. For unless I deliberately retrieved my intent from them, it would never rise freely to be expressed in the present.”

In Taisha’s case she had to confront the truth that she was not loved by her family, and her mother specifically: “It was your fate not to be loved by your family. Accept it!” Clara says to her quite bluntly.

As an example, Clara goes on to explain to Taisha some of her own history:

“I too had a problem very much like yours…I was always aware of being a friendless, fat, miserable girl, but through recapitulating I found out that my mother had deliberately fattened me up since the day I was born. She reasoned that a fat, homely girl would never leave home, and she wanted me there as her servant for life.”

“I went to my teacher, who was definitely the greatest teacher one can ever have, for advice about this problem,” she went on. “And he said to me, ‘Clara, I feel for you, but you are wasting your time because then was then: now is now. And now there is only time for freedom.”

It may sound too easy and too simplistic to just accept and move on and indeed that is not what Clara is asking of Taisha. She is asking her to confront her bitter truths by recapitulating their sources, by reducing herself to her child self again in order to relive the moments of greatest pain, when intents were set that controlled and inhibited her from fully expressing herself and exploring her fuller potential. If we remain bound by ideas placed on us as children we might never grow up, mature into responsible adults, or evolve into acceptance of our greater potential both as human beings and as energy beings capable of far more than meets the eye in our everyday reality.

When Clara tells Taisha that “You have only time to fight for freedom, Taisha…Now is now,” she is asking her to investigate the possibility that it might just be okay to reinvent herself at each confrontation with the truths and the untruths of old, by staying in the present, knowing that there is no time to waste.

Life will not wait for us. It greets us every moment of every day, yet we must consciously, and with awareness, greet it in return, tackling what it presents us with, decisively and with impunity, intent upon learning what our own truths might be, not what someone else has decided for us. From the perspective of now, we are offered daily opportunities to dig for our deepest underlying truths. If we can hold onto our awareness of being independent beings, with our deeper knowing of what it means to be human held in highest regard—that we are energy beings at our core, that our lives here are meant for evolutionary purposes—we can allow ourselves to embrace the fact that it is always our choice to break out of the webbing placed over us a long time ago, and repeatedly placed over us as we live out our lives.

When we recapitulate we must pose many challenges to ourselves, along with those placed on us daily by life itself. We must dare to break our old allegiances, our old pacts, and question every thought, idea, and belief that arises. We must challenge ourselves to change every tiny detail about ourselves if that is what will lead us on to becoming our true selves.

We must ask ourselves many questions as we recapitulate. Are we ready to discover and embrace our truths and become someone new, someone unrecognizable to those who once knew us in the past? Do we dare go beyond the old beliefs that have held us captive? What will happen if we sing and dance when we were once told we could not? What happens if we tell ourselves that we are beautiful, not fat and friendless, as Clara did? What happens when we admit to ourselves that our family did not love us, as Taisha did? Well, nothing happens except an enormous sense of freedom!

Now is now, and I choose to live now. I hope you do too! It’s really the only place to be: living in the moment. I have found the only means of getting here, to this moment, is by taking a personal inner journey of recapitulation.

Sending love as you take your journeys, embraced with intent for good recapitulations to freedom,
Jan

Excerpts from The Sorcerer’s Apprentice are from pages 117-118.

Chuck Ketchel, LCSWR