Written by Jan Ketchel with a channeled message from Jeanne Ketchel.
I feast on the first light of the morning sun as I sit and meditate, connect with Jeanne, and ask for guidance for this day, this week, and this new month of August. What guidance do you offer us, Jeanne? I ask. This is what she replies:
I offer you awareness of the world as comprised of interconnected energy and you are part of it! Each one of you is connected by energetic filaments, unseen and for the most part unknown. Trust me on this, you are all energetic beings comprised of energy that is seeking recognition and desirous of being put to better use.
Learn to feel the self as energy in the same way you perceive electrical current to be energy. You too are of similar makeup. You too are capable of transmitting your personal energy, both to the self within your body and outside the self to others and the world around you.
You have the ability to heal the self of damage to body and soul. You have the ability to aid in the healing of others. By your awareness and your intent, you have the ability to change yourself and your world. However, it takes work!
Today, I challenge all of you, My Dear Readers, to begin taking yourselves more seriously; to more deeply consider that each one of you has untapped powers of healing. Consider that there are processes of change at your core that have gone untapped and uninvestigated for far too long.
Why are you alive? Why do you exist at all? What higher purpose does your life serve? Who are you anyway? Can you imagine finding out the answers to these questions? Can you be open to the possibility that you are there to discover your own potential as an energetic being? What does that really mean?
In the context of many lifetimes, it means that perhaps you are ready to consider the truth of this idea. Perhaps, since you are a seeker of spiritual knowledge, you are ready to accept some new ideas about life upon that earth.
Energy Beings
Perhaps you wonder how I can communicate and pass on these words and ideas, seemingly coming out of thin air, because I do not in fact exist in your world. But I exist nonetheless and each one of you also exists, at this very moment, in the same energetic form as I. The only difference is that for the moment you inhabit a human form. I have been released from human form, as you will be one day as well. Until that time you might find it helpful to take into consideration that you are an energetic being inhabiting a human form.
You may not feel that you chose the form you are in, the person you are today, but, in fact, you did! Can you accept this? Can you appreciate your choice? Can you find your energy self and fully know that this journey you are on is vitally important? Can you find your energetic self more often as a result of these concepts and explore the ideas I propose?
If you are the same as me, an energetic being, then your abilities are unlimited. But, as I said, it takes work to discover those abilities, trust them, utilize them properly, and evolve beyond the world of personal attachments. I too have had to learn how to use them and how to evolve. I suggest that a wonderful exercise for this day, this week, and this new month is a daily process of acceptance of the self as a being of energy.
As often as possible state, out loud or too the self: I am a being comprised of energy! I am a being comprised of energy! I am a being comprised of energy!
Say this when you are waking in the morning and when you are going to sleep at night. Say this when you are preparing for your day—when walking, running, sitting, meditating, driving, working, playing, loving—let it be a constant mantra, replacing all the old mantras that keep you stuck and unhappy. Allow this phrase to be on your every breath and see what nuances of reality show themselves to you. Seek to envision the self as this energetic being in order to truly change how you view the world, how you relate to the world, and how you understand your personal life as an energy being in human form.
You all know this about the self already, you’ve just forgotten. You just need to dredge up this knowledge and remind the self of its truth on a daily basis. I am a being comprised of energy! Remember?
Thank you Jeanne! I, and my fellow energy beings, thank you for reminding us of this truth! I am a being comprised of energy! I am an energy being in human form!
I sat this morning editing the final version of Jan’s soon to be published The Recapitulation Diaries—Year One: The Man in the Woods. I encounter this dream. With Jan’s permission I include that dream here followed by her reflection upon awakening.
Talking heads
October 21, 2001
“I dream a strange dream about a bodiless head that rides on a small electronic platform that looks something like a large gray plastic model of an aircraft carrier. The features on the face are hard and set, metallic looking, the eyes glaring. I’ve stumbled into a large empty apartment building, unaware of its presence and apparently I’ve disturbed it while wandering around in this vast space. The head on the platform bolts out from underneath a pile of debris where it has lived for a long time and skims along the floor, the face mean and angry. It pursues me around the empty building for some unknown reason. Eventually I turn and attack it and the head falls off the platform. It crashes to the floor and explodes. I’m surprised to see that it’s no more than a pile of fluff, nothing but bits of paper and plastic.”
“In the morning I wake exhausted, tired of feeling so empty, so hollow. The crazy head chasing me doesn’t make me feel any better, but it does make me think that perhaps the praying mantis picking at my head [an earlier dream] was trying to alert me to something besides just the memories. Perhaps I’m not supposed to go after the head, not just supposed to dig through my head for the memories, after all. The head doesn’t really hold anything inside, as this dream shows; it’s just a lot of stuffing. Where do I look then? Where do I go for the memories if not into my head, into my brain, to the place where memories are supposedly stored?” [End of excerpt from book.]
Moments after reading this I opened Carlos Castaneda’s The Wheel of Time, in anticipation of writing my weekly blog, to the following:
“The internal dialogue is what grounds people in the daily world. The world is such and such or so and so, only because we talk to ourselves about its being such and such or so and so. The passageway into the world of shamans opens up after the warrior has learned to shut off his internal dialogue.” — p. 117
Jan’s dream and subsequent reflection illustrate that the mind, the home of the internal dialogue is merely fluff. The internal dialogue upholds the world that we all agree upon, with the consequence being, the creation of a consensus reality. To create a world is indeed a magical act, however, the truth is that it’s just an interpretation of energy spun by the internal dialogue.
Internally, Jan had upheld a world through an internal dialogue that created a story about her past that did not represent the truth of her experience in childhood. She was at a stage in her recapitulation where she needed to free herself of her mind. In order to do this, she had to confront her fear, which had allowed her internal dialogue to spin reality to protect her from painful truth. By confronting her fear and shattering her mind she was soon to free-fall into deeper truth. To discover these truths, as she reflects in this excerpt, she had to go outside the mind and allow her body to reveal the truth unfiltered by the mind. As Carlos points out: the passageway opens once the internal dialogue is silenced.
What keeps us attached to the internal dialogue is fear. We must be willing to confront our fears to get to deeper truth. Confronting the fear does not mean that the fear goes away. What it does mean, however, is that we insist upon pursuing the truth regardless of the fear. Fear continues to be present but it doesn’t stop the journey.
In recapitulation we intend to learn the truth. We don’t attach to the internal dialogue but go directly to the body for a full accounting of life lived.
The sun was shining, seemingly brighter and earlier than normal after a couple of days of overcast skies and thunderstorms. I was eager to walk in it’s first light.
“Don Juan says never carry anything in your hands when you walk,” Chuck reminded me, so I put my tiny digital camera in my pocket, wondering if I’d encounter something special, beautiful, or profound to photograph as we walked.
After we’d walked along for a while, talking quietly, I noted that there wasn’t much happening in the world around us. It wasn’t presenting its usual natural wonders, nothing to take a picture of. It seemed quiet. One car passed us. Then a bicyclist passed by, head down. Slumped over the handlebars he seemed focused on the front wheel endlessly turning as it rode the pavement. I recognized him as someone we pass often at that hour. He always seems depressed, never utters a greeting, never looks up, focused only on the road in front of him. Other than that I noted again the quiet of the morning. But then, at the same time, we both saw a rabbit, the first sign of real life. We smiled and acknowledged that nature does not disappoint.
Then I realized that I’d been like the man on the bike today, my head down, my eyes on the road ahead of me. As I’d taken each step I’d been aware only of what lay at my feet: the color of the pavement, the interplay of shadows and light, the leaves, bark, twigs and branches that came down in the violent storms that came through yesterday afternoon. The rabbit reminded me to look around, to lift my head from the path and see what else was available in my world at that moment.
Now the walk was different. Suddenly I was engaged in what was happening around me. Suddenly the perceived dull and sleepy world was alive and I was too. I noted how mistaken I was in my assumption that not much was happening. I recalled the first sounds we’d heard upon awakening in the morning, the baby foxes yipping and yelping in the backyard. I remembered the male bluebird who sat outside our window on the railing of the deck, letting us know that he and his mate have returned to the nesting box nearby for a third time this year, another egg-laying in progress, life giving new life.
As I recapitulated these earlier experiences, I studied again the bike rider, envisioning his riding posture, his energy stuck in his routine of riding along the same route each day, not noticing what else was around him. Unable to lift his head, I wondered what plagued him, and what he might be missing that could set him on a different path. I found myself empathizing with his dilemma, whatever it might be, for I too fall into the same patterns, ride the same road, only taking in the next step as I watch my foot hit the ground in front of me. Little changes, and even less is noticed, if I do not lift my eyes from the path in front of me.
This is what happens to all of us as we live out our lives, staying within our routines, caught in the endless turning of the wheel, whether it’s the endless wheel of work-worry-sleep, followed by more work-worry-sleep, or if it’s simply the daily routines we set out for ourselves. Even as we act out the habitual must-dos that really lead us nowhere, underneath it all we really do know that we need something else to make our lives meaningful and happy. But how do we step off the wheel? Today, I was reminded that if I just look up and away, in an instant the world becomes an entirely different place.
Once we set the intent to recapitulate, we can fall into the same kinds of habitual patterns, get stuck on similar wheels. Our personal dilemmas and deepest issues can overwhelm us. We can get caught in feeling sorry for ourselves, feeling neglected, abandoned, sad and depressed as we revisit our past and confront how we have lived, whether by choice or by circumstance. As we’re drawn back to recapitulate, we may forget to take in the world around us. Even while in deep recapitulation we must lift our heads and be in the world, for in my experience, it’s the world around us that offers us the help we need to interpret, to guide, to revision ourselves, as well as offering us the means to resolution. It’s also only in the world around us that we will find the means to relieve the stresses and intensities of doing deep inner work.
It’s also the world around us that offers us the opportunities to stretch our legs, so to speak, to experience ourselves as changing beings. As we recapitulate, we’re offered the chance to show ourselves and the world just how much we’ve changed, by refusing to do things the old way. As we face daily challenges in our old world, we’re offered the opportunity to test the new perspectives gained through the hard work of recapitulation. There is no better test ground or world in which to advance than the one we live in. This is the place we must do our evolutionary work in, and recapitulation is evolutionary work.
After the sighting of the rabbit I knew all I had to do was look up and allow the world to greet me with whatever it had to offer. As the second half of today’s walk progressed I lifted my eyes from the road and began to notice all the edible wild foods growing alongside the rural road we walk along, the prickly lettuce, the lambs ear, and plantain. I lifted my eyes higher and noticed that swallows now line the wires near the wetlands area where a few weeks ago the red winged blackbirds sat, sentinels guarding their nesting flocks in the tall grasses. As I walked even a week ago they’d dive down at me, warning me to keep away. They’ve moved on now, leaving the swallows their old perch. The world is constantly changing, I noted.
I heard the croak of a raven behind me and, looking higher still, I saw a tiny bird attacking him high in the sky, keeping him from raiding a nest no doubt. The hungry raven was no match for the tiny sharp-beaked bird and he flew off, cro-cro-croaking his guttural cry.
“What does that mean?” I wondered, for I find the raven most significant in my own world.
“Cro-Cro-CROAK! Cro-Cro-CROAK! Cro-Cro-CROAK!” replied the raven in answer to my question.
I repeated this phrase to myself a few times before I finally got the meaning of the raven’s call.
Don't Forget!
Don’t Forget! Don’t Forget! Don’t Forget! he seemed to be saying.
Don’t forget to use the world around you every day as you go through life. Don’t forget to lift your eyes from your well-worn path, from the routines, and notice what else is available to guide you along. Don’t forget that everything is available, possible, a guiding force, a messenger, a reminder. Don’t forget that as you recapitulate you learn new things about yourself and that you may not be as stuck and unavailable to change as you may think. Don’t forget to exercise the new you in the world. Don’t forget to actually put to use the new ideas, thoughts, and experiences you’ve been having. Don’t forget to trust your journey as perfectly right for you. And overall, don’t forget to allow yourself to experience the world differently.
You already know that the world is not as you at first perceive it, the raven reminds. This is what you learn all the time, but can you allow yourself to actually participate in that different world that you have worked so hard to enter, to understand, and to embrace?
The world of nature and the personal world we each live in, offers us everything we need to grow and change. To recapitulate or not is our personal choice. However, in my experience, everyday life is offering us opportunities to recapitulate and to use what we learn about ourselves all the time. We just don’t know this until we decide that it’s so, when we set the intent to re-experience how we’ve understood the world. Sometimes all we need to jump-start new life it the realization that we’re eager for a new perspective because the old one just doesn’t work for us anymore. That was my walking experience this morning.
As soon as I lifted my eyes from the hard gray road in front of me, I discovered a world of wonder. What is recapitulation anyway, but an opportunity to look at ourselves and our world with different eyes. Sometimes we need someone else’s eyes to show us what we’ve been missing. Sometimes we have to dare ourselves, push ourselves to go beyond our routines, ask ourselves to break through our old habits. Sometimes we have to ask ourselves to face our truths so we can move on, without regret, without sadness, simply because it’s time and right to do so. Recapitulation is happening all the time. Do you notice?
By the time I’d gotten home from my walk, I was in a new world. The bluebird greeted me on the deck again, showing me just how much in alignment with my spirit’s eagerness for changing life our natural world really is.
What are you being offered today to change your perspective, your outlook, your inner world, your relationship to self and others? There’s always something out there. What was the first indication in your world today that it’s just not as routine and boring as you’ve perceived it to be? Even in the subtlest ways, nature guides us.
Sending love and good wishes, and I thank the raven for posing ever so briefly so I could snap a photo of him!
Jan
Written by Jan Ketchel with a channeled message from Jeanne Ketchel.
Today I ask Jeanne to give us some guidance around the theme of now and what is most important for us to keep in mind as we go into a new week. Here is her response:
Remain optimistic! Imbue the self with positive thoughts and awaken positive life forces within. Even if dire circumstances surround you, either in your personal lives or in the world around you, move forward into your lives, My Dear Readers, with positive outlooks and inner compasses facing the truth of the energetic possibilities of self and world to continuously evolve and change.
In true reality nothing stays the same. Keep this in mind. Life is in flux, constantly changing, even if only incrementally, but this is change nonetheless. How do you think the great universe itself arrived at this reality of now, if not by incremental moves of change? In constantly shifting mode, life evolves.
So it is with all of you. Point your compasses, set your directionals, and make some life-altering decisions this week. Solidify already set intentions, staying more firmly upon your path, for now is the time of trial and testing, meant to more firmly set your agenda.
It may feel like giving-up time, like all-is-lost time, but that time of void, of unanchored free fall will only be momentary, as you use it to gather inner strength, to staunchly refuse the call of the big baby, either in self or others, and to reject the notions of impossibility or failure.
Now is the time of reasserting a deeper commitment to self and to the energy of life as the only reasons for life itself. For how can you expect fulfillment if you do not dare the self to take the next step? How can you indeed call yourself alive if you do not pursue life as if it were your only nurturance—sustenance and life force both?
You are all both the means and the way. You hold within yourself—in body, mind, and energetic spirit self—all that is necessary to truly live. Exploit your energy to more fully embrace life now. At all costs, do not falter or redirect your efforts unless your spirit tells you to. If your spirit is in alignment with your set intent, you are in the company of the proper traveling companion and this is your time of creation and fulfillment.
Just a little bit more of the usual confusion to go through and then you will be sailing into clarity and unwavering steadiness. Re-assert the rightness of your intent. Break no contracts. Live life to the fullest with knowing awareness, sobriety, humility, and deep appreciation for your fellow human beings, who support and fund your efforts to evolve.
Ready to take the leap?
Life is about to reveal itself more fully. Are you really ready for what awaits? This is what you must prepare for now: the great awakening moment of truth.
Not yet ready to face it? For those who are not feeling consciously prepared, I suggest allowing the awareness of the world and the universe as your propeller to come into play here. Here is the real truth: You are all going anyway. You are all going forward because the momentum is already in motion. The challenge is to realize it and go with awareness.
Even if reluctant, one can move into new life. Remember what I said earlier? Life moves forward in incremental shifts. Allow the self at least that notion of change and perhaps the journey may be more palatable, with less fear.
You and the universe have already had a lifetime of taking baby steps. You see how far you’ve come? Keep going baby steps or giant steps; it does not matter which. It’s the awareness that you cannot stop the energy of life that counts. Stay connected to that and watch how your intent greets you each day.
Await the wonder of the decisions you made to change to find ways to prove that you are always on the right track. Awareness is all you really need to accompany you. It will supply the answers. And don’t forget: They lie within!
Conserving and renewing energy while in free fall, I sign off; going forward without fear, I hope!
Thank you Jeanne!
Returning from vacation, I consult the I Ching for a picture of Now.
Collapse is imminent!
I receive the image of a house whose walls can no longer carry the weight of the roof, now on the verge of collapse.
In a dream, I’m stuck beneath the streets of New York City in a narrow crawl space. I look around at the thick wooden beams and wonder at the weight of what is above, the buildings, the restaurants, the parties taking place, all the people dancing. How long can those beams support it all?
The country is galvanized around raising the debt “ceiling.” From all sides there is fear of imminent collapse.
The I Ching counsels shoring up the walls of the house to avoid collapse by giving generously to those below. In the context of a nation, this means to take care of the real needs of the masses, the true backbone of the country.
Ironically, the Tea Party Republicans are agents of change here, bringing attention to the fragility of the economic structure. As with the “ceiling” structure of an overburdened roof, continuing to raise the debt “ceiling” will lead to inevitable collapse.
In the recent past, the Republicans had no problem raising that ceiling five times under President Bush and seventeen times under Reagan. Suddenly though, they’ve elevated it to a monumental crisis under President Obama. Despite the hypocrisy and thinly veiled overt ploy to bring down Obama at all costs, even if it means bringing down the nation itself, the bottom line is: the more you raise the ceiling, the greater you weaken the structure. That is, unless you strengthen the supporting walls.
The Republican strategy is to strengthen the walls by stripping the social supports to the masses while greedily filling the coffers of the wealthy. The slogan is: No raised taxes on the wealthy at any cost!
The I Ching clearly states that this strategy will lead to definite collapse. Synchronistically, we see this illustrated by the tumbling Murdoch empire built upon total greed and corruption. Unless the structure of the nation shifts to truly caring for the needs of the common citizen, the nation will collapse as we see reflected all around the world in the revolutions of the Arab spring.
On a personal level, we are challenged to assess the stability of our own psychic structures. Inwardly, the “roof” of our personality is the ego, built upon the supporting walls of our instinctive selves and the deep well of our spirit selves.
Is the roof of our personality, our ego self, giving generously to the needs of our instinctive self, our body, and to our spirit self, the foundational reason for our current life in this world?
Is our ego in alignment with our spiritual purpose? Is our ego properly nourishing our body as well as caring for the physical environment we inhabit in this world? Is our ego insisting on remaining in the wrong relationship out of fear of loss, abandonment, and aloneness? Does our ego control others overtly or covertly to serve its own agenda? Is the ego willing to face the truths of life lived or does it remain in illusion, inflation or deflation, or comfortably numb in addiction?
If our ego is off on its own greedy agenda, accumulating more and more for itself, overburdening the roof while neglecting the supporting walls of the house, that structure is in imminent danger of collapse; collapse of the personality into depression, or even psychosis.
Inwardly, giving generously to those below requires the ego to serve the deepest needs of the self. The ego, in this alignment with the self, is in no danger of collapse. To the contrary, it is likely to find itself in the place of abundance, generously and gratefully supported by the wellspring of life.
