Messages from Jeanne

#764 Flowing

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

Today is the eve of the summer solstice and of Jeanne’s birthday, entry into the astrological sign of Cancer under which I was also born. I believe that a water sign challenges us to flow with life, to accept what comes our way and yet to not attach, but to constantly learn how to let go and keep moving on. This has been my personal process and now, as we enter the water sign of Cancer, perhaps it’s everyone’s present challenge: to learn how to flow with life.

As Riverwalkers, the name Jeanne gave us years ago when we set up this website, she urged us to learn from the river, to walk beside it rather than jump into it unaware. But, obviously, sometimes we find ourselves in the water, in constant motion, churning along seemingly out of control, dragged along by the current. Today, I ask her for guidance as we enter a new time of energetic alignment and consequence. What message do you offer us today, Jeanne?

Here is her response:

To flow with what life presents also means getting the self into a good state of inner balance and calm, for it is only in being innerly set that one will truly be able to flow through life.

What do you mean by innerly “set”?

I use the word “set” to mean grounded, anchored by inner knowing that the journey you are each on is prefect, that you are exactly living the life you should be living, dealing with what you should be dealing with at this particular time in your life.

Being set implies acceptance, but it does not mean that you sit back and let the river of life drown you in its turbulence or even its quiet boredom, but that you truly engage it, knowing full well that you are set on your journey. All you have to do is flow with it, as Jan suggests. This idea of flowing with life allows one to constantly confront what is presented while simultaneously investigating it for the potential it holds.

I suggest that deep questioning and processing of life’s issues, challenges, turmoils, emotions, and joys be fully explored so that all aspects of possibility in life are investigated and nothing is left behind unexplored.

One never does know where one will be led by the vicissitudes in life and that is the beauty of it. Do you choose though to be sad and depressed at your lot, tossed about by the waves and swells of the river of life, or do you choose to swim out of it to new ground? Do you choose to struggle against the current when there is another option? Are there boats in sight, islands to stand upon and gain new insights and perspectives from? Are there places of rest, both within and without, that you have failed to anchor in?

Get set inside the self as to how you desire your life to go from this day forth. Turn inward and confront the fears that keep you floating along but not necessarily flowing. There is a difference; floating implies no action, while flowing implies action and decisiveness.

Do you float through life without firmly being present and self-accepting, or do you flow through life accepting your own powerful abilities to direct, by choice, your direction?

Life is full of possibility. It offers, each day, a new choice, a new direction option. Even in the mundanity of life is there great opportunity to shift the self, even incrementally, if one chooses to be optimistic.

Seek the light upon the water, but be fully aware of the dark depths as well. Have respect for the power and the softness of this metaphor for life, for water cleanses, bathes, and gently touches the skin of babes, yet does it also destroy, cut down and through the strongest of mountains of stone. An essential ingredient to life, it must be protected, guarded, admired, and properly used for life to indeed survive.

Think of your own lives now, My Dears. Do you merely survive, or do you engage in life to the fullest? There are many things to learn from water, the flowing life energy not the least of them. How do you intend to flow with your life this week? What decisions will you make that are energetically in alignment with a new time upon that earth?

Set yourself firmly in your calmly centered self, anchored in your inner knowing, before you set off on your adventures into life—only then will you indeed be able to flow. Know the self well and then will you be set to know what else comes your way. You will know what to do because your alignment will be immediately apparent, your energy linking properly to its only possibility at that moment. That is what you will find if you can indeed flow with your life!

Good luck as the sun enters the picture, rising and setting over the picture of your life. Watch the moonlight as well, for all life is lit from above. Use both sun and moon, light and dark, day and night, inner and outer life aspects to guide you as you seek right alignment.

Most humbly offered.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Present Without Props

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The female cohorts of Carlos Castaneda would laugh mysteriously as they described Carlos’s romance with knowledge. He would lie down and cover his body with books, literally absorbing knowledge through their many points of contact with his body. Carlos had released the prop that reading must happen through the eyes only; he suspended judgment and opened to new channels of learning within himself.

Oftentimes, during recapitulation, people begin to experience all kinds of physical sensations at different places inside and on the outside of their bodies. These sensations can be so unexpected and powerful that many times medical consultation is sought. Once cleared of medical etiology another possibility may be considered. Perhaps the sensation is an active communication of knowledge from some other point on the body self. Perhaps the recapitulation has opened the channels to knowledge that may have been stored by the body self some fifty years ago. Perhaps the body self is inviting us into the full knowledge of the experiences of our life lived through direct sensorial experience.

This is very often the case in recapitulation; a united effort by the body self to fill in the blanks in our memory of life already lived. This experience of recapitulation, whether intentionally sought or unintentionally triggered, asks us to drop the prop of our rationality that tells us that the body neither stores memory nor communicates independently of the mind.

How terrifying it can be to stay fully present and absorb this body of knowledge! The body generally “speaks” through direct sensorial experience that can range from pleasure to overwhelming pain. Often, if we allow ourselves to take the sensation journey with our body, channels may open to smells, temperature, and sounds, as well as triggering images, scenes, and eventually full movies of forgotten experience. The overall experience can range from subtle to riveting—the roller coaster of a lifetime.

Intimacy, in relationship, might also be defined as staying present without the props. How deeply might we allow ourselves to stare into each other’s eyes? How accepting might we be of sitting with each other, fully present, in utter silence? How long before the mind provides a thought to be discussed, a prop of distraction to create conversation, abstraction in place of presence? Can we not do the routines that have formed the crust and definition of our relationship—the props of habit—and open ourselves to new truths of who we are or who our partner is?

Finally, can we be fully present with ourselves, occupying the seat of the observer? Can we let go of the props of music or voice at the ear, computer or TV in the eye, food or drink in the mouth, book or cell phone in the hand?

Can we simply be present without judgment, unattached to thought, experiencing sensation and energy as it flows in the body? Can we notice the sound and vibration of energy? Can we allow it to deepen? Can we journey with it, uninterrupted by props?

Let’s see what happens!
Chuck

Jan's Blog, Quote for the Day

A Euell Gibbons Moment

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Ever since I was a girl and started carrying Stalking the Wild Asparagus around in my backpack I have been on the hunt for the illusive wild asparagus. Eureka! I’ve finally found it! I’ve been passing it for years probably, but the other morning my attention was caught by a large and beautiful plant, its color and wispy fronds reminding me of the vibrancy of the early morning and the energy of all things.

“Wow! That’s a wild asparagus!” I exclaimed, without a hint of doubt. It was as if I always knew what it looked like and it was just sitting there waiting for me to recognize it.

Here is a picture I took of it, and here is some of what Mr. Gibbons wrote about the wild asparagus. He first discovered it as a twelve-year-old school boy while living in New Mexico, and it wasn’t until he was a middle-aged man and living in Pennsylvania that he found it again.

Wild Asparagus

“The edible tips and spears, in which we are chiefly interested, appear long before the asparagus puts on its summer finery, and they must be located by that drab, old, last year’s stalk. My neighbors often smile when they see me by the roadside with my asparagus knife and pail. They think it is much simpler to merely buy the asparagus one wants at the supermarket. But I have a secret they don’t know about. When I am out along the hedgerows and waysides gathering wild asparagus, I am twelve years old again, and all the world is new and wonderful as the spring sun quickens the green things into life after a winter’s dormancy. Now do you know why I like wild asparagus?” –From Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons, page 31.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: A Very Magical Time

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It’s been a little challenging lately to detach from all the political hoopla and hype, all the name-calling, finger pointing, joking, judging, and ugliness going on. In an effort to go into deeper solitude I’ve decided not to post what I consider apropos articles and blogs, even though they may certainly contain messages in alignment with what Chuck, Jeanne, and I regularly write about, because I find that my energy tends to stay stuck on them. Instead, I’m weaning myself off my usual checking-of-what’s-happening-in-the-media morning routine. Often just a quick fix—”Just to see what’s happening!”—I’ve decided to remove all the links from my bookmarks bar and stay away. Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! There they go! I just removed myself from the Internet. It’s so easy and really so freeing! From this day forward I am not doing, as the shamans say.

Not Doing what I normally do allows for experiencing everything differently, even if ever so slightly. My intent now can focus on what’s most important to me personally rather than on what is being thrown in my face according to someone else’s intent, greed, passion, fixation, penchant or desire. No longer bombarded by ads, pop-up windows, moving icons, and numerous other distractions, I can stay focused on nature—the magic of real nature—inside myself and right outside my window.

As I experience the early morning hours, before most people are out of bed, I offer myself the opportunity to connect directly with nature’s process. I stir when the birds stir. I listen to their morning chatter, the darkness of the night gently moving aside as the sky begins to lighten in the East and I’m happy to be alive, right then, at that moment. It’s a special time. Just waking from dreams, I’m often still connected to other possibilities. Still softened by the night, I don’t immediately jump to thoughts, but let my senses, my intuition, my spirit speak to me. It’s a magical time.

The opportunities to do something personally desirable and fitting are fully available at 4:30 a.m. I can meditate, channel, pray, write in my journal, jot down my dreams, or simply stand on the deck and watch the birds, the deer, smell the dew, catch glimpses of the last stars and breathe in the cool morning air. It’s a magical time.

As I continue working on the final draft of my book, The Recapitulation Diaries: The Man in the Woods—the first of three volumes—I’m struck by how intensely healing it is to be able to squarely face our traumas, to relive them, and excise them from our bodies, minds, psyches and spirits. In so doing, we offer ourselves the opportunity to return to a natural state of being, or perhaps even for the first time to experience what it means to be calm and contented enough to feel present in this world. It was all I ever yearned for, to feel like I really belonged here and to find out why I existed. I could not have achieved the place of calmness I now inhabit had I not challenged myself to go on a journey of a lifetime: into myself. In fact, I am certain I would be dead, eaten away by the stuff that festered inside me.

Electing to take a recapitulation journey was perhaps the greatest conscious challenge of my lifetime, which led to my discovering that I was indeed opening up to a journey of magical proportions. My experiences, as I took that journey, unfolded most naturally, as I relinquished my hold on the things that I had always counted on, much as I did today in excising the media links from my web browser. As I took that recapitulation journey I had to turn my back on a lot of crutches, habits, behaviors, safety measures, and even relationships, that I thought I could not live without and throw myself out into the unknown. I had to dare myself again and again to face life and my recapitulating process with nothing familiar in hand. I had to continually challenge myself to break through the barriers that kept me from fully experiencing myself in the world. And truthfully, just as I experience early morning as a magical time, my recapitulation process was also a magical time.

Deciding to take a recapitulation journey is deciding to truly live—on personal terms—unfettered by opinions, judgments, rules, pacts, secrets and lies. It is choosing to deconstruct, sort through the mess, and reconstruct the self with only that which is personally relevant. At first it may indeed feel like a death, because it is a dying process as the old self dies and a new self, mostly unknown, dares to push into life. The process is natural. Like nature we too have the capability of dying to old ideas and old selves and allowing for new life.

Now, during this growing season, I watch the seeds I’ve planted bursting forth from the earth, thrilled at the speed and energy of this new life. As I listen to the birds and taste the wild strawberries, I am reminded that recapitulation, that death to new life, is the most natural of processes. As I walk, I find the road littered with the critters hit by cars, yet I know that the crows will soon swoop down and feed off the carcasses, death leading always to life giving energy. If we choose to view it as such, we clearly see that this is a most magical time.

In choosing not doing, I choose to live on my own terms. I choose to continue recapitulating, going even more deeply into myself, questioning my actions, my thought processes, my habits, challenging myself to keep changing, to keep doing things differently, to face life and to face death, knowing that both of them are part of the cycle of nature. I find that in studying nature and the ancients—the Shamans, the Buddhists, the Hindus, etc.; teachings connected with nature, spirit, energy, and the experiences of being in all worlds simultaneously—I am not so fraught with concern about the changes taking place on the world stage. I am not so caught up in the frenzy or worry, but taking it all very seriously nonetheless.

I know that I must do my part to energetically stay in alignment with nature, to trust that Mother Nature (Pachamama, Gaia) is doing what is appropriate—perhaps she too is recapitulating because she knows it is time to do so. The Earth, as a living being, is most powerful and decisive and I must trust that her own process must be as destructive as my own recapitulation process was when I began it ten years ago. I must continue to accept that destruction is necessary for new growth and that the things happening in the world are all in alignment with a far greater process that none of us can fully comprehend. It’s a magical time.

I look forward to not doing today and every day, to seeing what else comes to greet me, what naturally unfolds as I set about my workday. It’s exciting to be alive during this magical time. The energy of change is powerful. I choose to ride it. I hope you do too!

Meet you out there,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

#763 Time for Solitude

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

Here is the message I channeled from Jeanne this morning, simply asking her to give us all some guidance as we go into the day and the week ahead. This is what she advises:

Seek some solitude today...

I can only stress today that you take some time for solitude. It is crucial now that mankind turn inward for solace, inspiration, creativity, and even entertainment, for in constant outward attention is the spirit soon drained and left gasping for breath and notice.

Please treat your inner life as well as you treat your outer life—or even better than that—and you will have long days of peacefulness upon that earth.

Continue learning how to flow with your changing world. Change your attention to your inner world now more succinctly, paying attention to what comes to you as you sit in reverie. Use it to guide you in your outer life and in the world, as it spins, spews, and seeks to bring the messages of concern and change that are so necessary now.

Do not become desperate beings in the wake of disasters, but become silent introspective soul seekers. Only in alignment with nature will man survive the next few decades of severe drought and commercial devastation that will befall an unenlightened population.

Find notice of what is to come all around you, but find what you need within for your survival. The idea of survival of the fittest may determine your way, but for the future that is going to mean something beyond the physical. Learn what that might mean for you personally by investigating your deeper self. It is there that all answers lie.

Seek calmness and fortitude inside the self. Stop looking outwardly so much now. Turn to a different center of attention—at the core of every human being. It awaits your arrival. Visit it often now.

Channeled in a moment of solitude—from Jan and Jeanne

Chuck Ketchel, LCSWR