#680 Stay Grounded in Inner Energy Today

May 3, 2010 Jan Leave a comment

Jan Ketchel channeling Jeanne Marie Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
What is the most pertinent message you have for us on this day?

I have spoken lately of paying attention to nature, of understanding how change happens, and of connecting to nature during times of change, for nature not only reflects the energy of change but embodies it as well. Today it is likely that greater moments of awareness and subsequent shifts will be noted and achieved. This awareness and shift will be both personal and impersonal, but the important factor is to not only notice what is happening around you, and inside you, but to use it for growth.

Today is a good day to learn something new about the self. As you are confronted by the energy outside of you, find out how it is really affecting the energy inside of you. Is your personal energy out of synch with the outer energy? Is your personal energy in its own shift, needing something that only you can provide? Is the outer energy pushing you in this direction of shift, aiding you in your endeavors, or is it disrupting your personal progress? Is the energy of today to be engaged in, or is it to be detached from? Such questions as these require contemplation at all times, however, I underscore that the energy of now is quite volatile, quite aggressive and demanding. But even such energy can be tamed and utilized for personal growth, though it takes a keen sense of self, of where you are now, and what you need, in order to not get swept up in the vastness of the energy as it comes into your world. The vastness of the energy refers to its widespread power to override all other energy, even that of concerted efforts to change.

Pay attention, during such times, to the energy of self and to what it truly needs right now, rather than attaching to the energy of others or the possibilities that abound outside of you, offering to sweep you up in what appears to be quite vital and invigorating energy. Do not be fooled into something that does not truly resonate with self.

This is a day to stay grounded in the needs of the self, to be reflective and thoughtful about the inner energy that has been pushing you in a new direction for a long time. This may be the day you have long awaited, the day of finality of intent, setting you more firmly on your new path. Use the energy of now wisely by determining your true commitment to the inner desires. Are you ready to firmly commit to the new path that has been revealed over the past few months? Have you received enough reasons, enough encouragement, enough signs that it is indeed the path you need to be on? Are you ready to set your feet down more firmly upon this new path and take the journey that you already know lies waiting for you to more fully embrace, engage in, and own as your own true journey, regardless of what you may be drawn to outside of you?

You see, that is the dilemma that must always be encountered and resolved, the inner and outer conflict. Who among you does not struggle with the self, the conflicted self? It is human nature to struggle, but even so, a choice must be made as to which path will be taken as paths appear, as decisions arise, as life unfolds.

Who are you now and who do you desire to be? How are you being guided, at this moment in time, to choose the path of growth and progress toward a more united self? What choice, made today, even at this very moment, will bring you closer to the self you truly resonate with and desire to cultivate? Where is the true energy of self?

It is the energy of self that you seek to recognize, know, and remain attached to now, while the outer energy presents you with all kinds of opportunities. Sit quietly with the self and ask for guidance on what to do next. From this place of inner calm, turning your back on the energy knocking on your door, may you hear the quiet answer you truly need right now.

Chuck's Blog

#679 Chuck’s Place: The Womb in the Age of Reason

May 1, 2010 Chuck Leave a comment

The primary function of the womb is reproduction: the production and continuation of the life of our species. Shamans maintain that the womb has a secondary function, rarely accessed, as the epicenter of evolution. For shamans, evolution is a function of intent and the ability to perceive and interpret energy in new ways.

Shamans call the womb a “perceiving box,” capable of perceiving and interpreting energy as direct knowledge, completely independent of the cogitations of the mind. This is not a rational process, but a living, irrational process, like life and nature itself.

Shamans claim that women’s access to direct knowledge is unparalleled. In fact, it happens so easily that women take it for granted or simply dismiss it. In contrast, men, lacking a womb, must work very hard to gain access to direct knowledge and highly prize that achievement. For shamans, this is the advantage men have over women; since they work so hard for it, they don’t dismiss it. When this topic was touched upon at a Tensegrity workshop I had attended, the question arose as to the fate of women who no longer had their wombs due to hysterectomies. We were assured that the womb center was fully present in the energy body, regardless of changes in the physical body. Perhaps the major reason women dismiss their access to direct knowledge is reason itself, the reigning fixation of awareness in the modern world.

Women, like men, are socialized to cultivate the mind by mastering rationality. The ability to understand and explain life in rational terms is deemed a measure of intelligence and is a core component of self-esteem. Simply knowing, without knowing why one knows what one knows, without being able to establish a systematic rational building block of facts, in modern terms is deemed both laughable and primitive.

As we watch the nigredo of oil sweep across the Gulf of Mexico, what is it that we know? How much oil dumps into the Gulf each day; how the oil will be encircled and contained; how the leak will be capped; what the effects will be on the shrimp industry; how government and industry will work together to solve this regrettable miscalculation? What does the womb perceive? What does the womb know about life and where it is headed under the dominance of rationality in our modern world? Who will value what the womb knows?

In my clinical work as a psychotherapist I have often been struck by the knowing of the womb, as reported by women clients at different times in their monthly cycles. Of course, the regimentation and orderliness of the modern world has socialized women to devalue and override the stirrings and moods of the womb, though the knowing womb frequently overrides such repressive efforts by outbursts of irrationality. In my experience, the knowledge that can burst forth at these times, though exaggerated by the energetic process needed to overcome repressive efforts, frequently reveals truths that ultimately become major life changes, though they may take decades to realize.

For shamans, the future of our evolution rests in our ability to break the fixation of our awareness on a world of solid objects and a mind of reason. The ability to perceive energy in new ways frees our evolutionary potential. Yet, even in this world of solid objects, might we free ourselves of the dominance of the rational? As we observe now the destruction of life on our planet, as it is reasonably rationalized away in quantifiable, descriptive terms, masquerading as control and order, might it not be time to listen to the knowing of the womb, the bearer of life, the seat of evolution?

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

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Going Beyond the Ego

April 28, 2010 Jan Leave a comment

Last fall, on the night of October 23, 2009, I asked the women shamans to give me guidance once again while dreaming. I placed the dreaming pillow on my lower abdomen, over the area of the uterus, and asked them to come to me in the night. “I would like to know the next step in learning to become a shaman,” I intended, as I went to sleep. When I woke in the morning I saw that I had written, in big cryptic dream writing, having successfully roused myself out of deep dreaming enough to pick up my pen, the following sentence: My own need to resolve must guide me to redemption beyond the self.

Upon awakening the next morning, I wrote this in my journal:

After I wrote that in the middle of the night I lay back down and thought: Oh, dissolution of ego self is the next step; resolution of all deeper issues related to the ego. Once again I wrote in a half-awake state, but this time there was no inner battle, no laziness. I simply said: Write this down, and I reached for my book, sat up, wrote it and then lay back down without the usual thoughts that of course I would remember it. This step is the recapitulation step. In recapitulating all inner issues all ego resolves as well, because during recapitulation the ego is dismantled. Redemption, true redemption, is completely ego-free. It is a spiritual state of being, of nothingness. Redemption lies beyond all earthly attachments, ego or otherwise, revolving around the self as special or important. To resolve all needs of self is really an inner desire to evolve. In recapitulation one is confronted with what the inner needs are, with what needs to be resolved. The challenge is to release the self to take the recapitulation journey. Getting beyond the self, both the inner needs and outer needs and desires, etc., to a place of utter calm detachment from self is redemption; it is freedom. (End of journal entry.)

Once again, I am struck by the synchronicity of this blog with what Chuck wrote about on Saturday regarding the warrior’s ultimate challenge, which is to lose self-importance. If we stay within the teachings of the shamanic world we are constantly confronted with this idea that, although we are taught to live our lives a certain way by everyone we encounter as we grow and mature into adulthood, once we get there we are often at a loss for what to do with our lives. It was not until I began the deeply challenging process of recapitulation that I began to decide that who I was really was totally up to me to determine. Until then I had lived within a code of acceptable behaviors, pursuing a life that I thought was right, by someone else’s standards, though at the same time I fought deeply within myself over this capitulation, telling myself that I was different, special, talented, creative, any number of attributes and qualities to keep my ego happy. However, once I entered the shaman’s world, under Chuck’s tutelage, everything changed. I began to see the world from a different perspective, but the funny thing was that I also immediately recognized it; it was somehow familiar. When Chuck talks and writes of the shamans he is referring to the shamans of Carlos Castaneda’s line. In the early seventies, when I first read Castaneda’s three early books, I had the same sense of familiarity with the experiences and worlds he entered, though I could not call up from my deeply buried unconscious what that meant. I knew I was not ready for it, though I had an inkling that someday I would come back to it in some form. Now I have been privileged to experience recapitulation and, as Chuck writes about the world of the warriors shattering as they leave their human form, I too have experienced that shattering. In the process of recapitulation, our own world, as we know it, is shattered.

I have also learned that the recapitulation process is a lifelong process, but, once willingly engaged in, it becomes fascinating. At least that has been my experience. Now, having already shifted my perspective on how I view and react to the world, I recall and relive events from my past with a different attitude, more detached and curious than frightened or ashamed. I would not have been able to achieve this had I not accepted the appointment with my unconscious and unrelenting inner self who, after fifty years of trying to tell me that I had to do an inner journey, was finally paid attention to. And what made me finally pay attention? Well, a lot of things, but mostly it was the restlessness that constantly drove me to seek change, to move, to do something, anything, to calm the unrelenting sense that there was something deeply wrong. Finally the restlessness broke through and I couldn’t stop it this time. I knew I couldn’t uproot my family and make one more drastic move. I knew that this time I alone had to change. I alone had to tackle what it was that would not leave me in peace. This was about me, I finally realized, no one else, and I had to have the courage to face myself. I alone had to enter into my hidden self and ask all the questions that needed to be asked, and to allow the answers to come from deep inside me, pushing aside the normal judgments and the flippant remarks that had sufficed up until then.

When I began my inner journey I didn’t even know what a journey was, much less what a recapitulation was. I knew what a life journey was, but I didn’t know what an inner journey, a spiritual journey was, though I had lived a deeply introverted, creative life. I didn’t really know what a shaman was, either. I was curious about all those words that held such mystery, but the true meaning of them was not to come easy. Until I took the journey that my unconscious self had been pushing me toward nothing would make sense in a real way. Everything would remain as illusive as the works of Castaneda until I elected to go beyond the world as I had always viewed it and lived it and decided to go on an adventure of a lifetime.

Thanks for listening to my dreaming and awake experiences. I offer my process, without attachment, I think, purely as an example of what can happen once the decision is made to go in a different direction. At one time, I was one of the most fearful people you could ever have met, appearing quite calm and advanced on the outside, aloof and flowing when comfortable, but utterly terrified on the inside, always aware that the world was not to be trusted, not safe. Facing my fears was quite a process. I know many who are in the midst of charting their way through their own fears now, and I know it is difficult, but I also know that at each step the burden lightens, the fears fall away, the judgments dissipate. Each step of the past and of the journey, the old one and the new one, become understood as totally valid and necessary. Each step is freeing. Each step leads to redemption of self, from attachment to ego. But the first step must, as the women shamans told me in my dream last fall, come from the inner need to resolve the issues of the self. That is the impetus that must finally be invited in to dismantle the old structures that uphold the old self, the old world, the human form that does not really want to live that way any more.

Until next week. Keep dreaming with intent!
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

#678 Seeds of Awareness

April 26, 2010 Jan Leave a comment

Jan Ketchel channeling Jeanne Marie Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Do you have a message of guidance for us today?

My Dear Ones, do not forget that you are the changing ones. You are the ones who have the ability to sway from the path, to choose a different route, to make new decisions outside of the natural flow of life. As nature goes so does man go is not truly meant to be how it goes. Yes, nature is what man must pay attention to in order to learn what it means to be an evolving being, but nature, in its repetitiveness, is but one teacher. The other teacher lies deeply buried inside each one of you, and that teacher is the desire of the self for new life, for new adventures, for something unknown.

Though you may often fear change, it is also the emergence of desire that creates fear. For fear would not arise is you were not being challenged to go beyond the comfortable self, the self who flows with the world as you interpret it. Today, I suggest that another energy lies deeply buried inside each of you that is different from the energy of nature as you see it and know it outside of you. As living energy you hold within something else that is not replicated in the world you see before your eyes. In the world that you see there is a limitation of process, though that world offers you the lessons in repetition that are necessary for understanding evolution, reincarnation, and growth.

You see, what I speak of today is that other aspect of man that allows for growth beyond what is presented. Each one of you has within the seeds of awareness and this is what I speak of as the catalyst for change. Your seeds of awareness lie buried until you dig them out of their bed of darkness by your intent; until you expose them to the light and urge them, with tenderness and prodding, to awaken and reach toward the light.

During your lifetime you are offered many tools that will provide the means of excavation and awakening. If you return to the world around you, living the repetitive life, turning outward for your examples of how to awaken, seeing only what is before your eyes, you will miss the true seeds of awareness within. Even nature has these properties of deep inner awareness, though you see only that which reappears in the cycle of life on the outside. Your human eyes take in only what lies before you, but your eyes of awareness see far more.

Your seeds of awareness must now become your new eyes of seeing. In order to evolve, a new process of growth must become your means of living. I ask that you break through your darkness, past the fear that arises to keep you conformed, and allow what lies beneath your fear to emerge and access the light of new energy. Your seeds of awareness may be very well known to you or they may be completely unknown. Perhaps you have glimpsed them, the urgings at your core, at your heart, and your deepest desires. Perhaps you have never noticed them as such, but something inside you tells you they exist. You are all creatures of nature, of the natural world, the natural process of birth and death, as you see it played out before you in nature and in the human physical living and dying cycles. But there is so much more that is being missed.

I know that even the word fear presents more fear. Everyone is afraid. But fear is the catalyst to change. If you can face your fears as they arise, question them, break through them to what is lying beneath them, the negative fears will turn to positive energy and your seeds of awareness will begin to sprout. Fear is the recapitulation companion waiting to take you on your inner journey. If you can begin to see fear as your greatest ally, your new journey beyond repetition, to access the self as energy, will begin.

You see, your seeds of awareness are the energy body, the self as comprised of energy alone, without physical composition and form, completely free. But fear must be burst apart for true energy to be accessed and released. Fear blocks access, as the dark earth blocks the seed from the light. How then does the seed emerge each spring from the dark earth? Sheer energy! And that is what you also have inside you, the sheer energy of life to continually re-emerge, to re-challenge itself to face the darkness, to burst through the fear and reach toward the light. That is the metaphor that nature offers each one of you.

Access your seeds of awareness by going into the inner darkness and bring forth into your lives your most precious selves, your energy selves. Allow your true energy to explore the world around you and you might begin to experience it differently. Life is meant to be challenging in order for you to wake up one day and determine that, yes, there must be more to life than that which I see before my eyes. And what is that for you? What are you missing?

The seeds of awareness are golden seeds. Keep that in mind as you seek them. They hold the light you will need as you make the journey into your darkness. They are awareness itself. They are energy and truth. They are you.

Chuck's Blog

#677 Chuck’s Place: Losing the Human Form

April 24, 2010 Chuck 2 Comments

This past week I found myself contemplating evil. Two weeks ago I explored the role of evil in the shaman’s world as a necessary encounter that advances seekers on their evolutionary journeys. Last week I delved into evil from a strictly human perspective, exploring the role of evil in the collective psyche of the human race. I am continually drawn back to the shaman’s world where I find the tools and pragmatism of their discoveries most helpful in dealing with the affairs of this world in preparation for journeys in all worlds. I decided to be guided by synchronicity for this blog today and opened The Wheel of Time to the following quote taken from Carlos Castaneda’s The Second Ring of Power.

“A warrior knows that he cannot change, and yet he makes it his business to try to change, nevertheless. The warrior is never disappointed when he fails to change. That’s the only advantage a warrior has over the average man.” (p. 166)

It’s not really that a warrior knows he cannot change; it’s more that a warrior does not attach to the outcome of his actions. In psychological terms, this represents the egoless ego. A warrior’s ego is neither willful nor inflated, but focused and pragmatic. The ego is a functional unit, not an identity. A warrior intends an outcome and acts impeccably in accordance with that intent. That is all that matters. The outcomes of actions merely present the circumstances for the next decision, the next action. Disappointment is a direct function of identification of ego, with accumulated deeds, such as merit badges or detention slips. I succeeded, I’m a success; I failed, I’m a failure: Me, Me, Me. A warrior suspends judgment. Judgment casts value upon the ego. The warrior seeks freedom from an ego identity, from judgment, from the human form.

I turn now to the opposite page in the same book for the following quote:

“Warriors must be impeccable in their effort to change, in order to scare the human form and shake it away. After years of impeccability, a moment will come when the human form cannot stand it any longer and leaves. That is to say, a moment will come when the energy fields contorted by a lifetime of habit are straightened out. A warrior gets deeply affected, and can even die as a result of this straightening out of energy fields, but an impeccable warrior always survives.” (p. 167)

The human form is the unique configuration that our inherent energy is funneled into by what C. G. Jung called the archetypal patterns of the collective unconscious. The human form, from a shamanic perspective, refers to a specific interpretation of energy, not to be confused with our physical bodies. Actually, shamans have discovered that the human body, or solid reality, is an interpretation of energy. This is not all that radical, as even mainstream physics can demonstrate that, at its core, everything is energy. The shamans highlight the role of socialization to create the interpretation of energy they call the human form. The repetitive behavioral patterns we are taught from infancy by older, socialized members of the human community shape our energy into a uniform set of habitual behaviors recognizable to all humans, creating a uniform consensus reality we call Our world.

Shamans have determined that the lion’s share of our inherent energy, in the human form, is spent on habitual behaviors focused on self-importance and self-pity. In our human form we can spend a lifetime in either self-doubt or self-pity over our failures to meet expectations. We can become obsessed with self-motivation, trying to conquer the world or our own inertia to prove ourselves: to make something of our lives, to produce something to leave behind or to bask in during our golden years. We can become obsessed with becoming good, becoming great, becoming selfless, etc. All of these strivings, from a shamanic perspective, are variations of self-importance. In a nutshell, the shamans see the human form as an energetic entity completely consumed in a narcissistic bubble of self-involvement, totally incapable of fighting its way out of this self-absorption. If you stay in the human form mold you live and die in it, closed to the possibility of evolution. In Buddhist terms, your destiny is reincarnation, another opportunity to awaken to energetic reality.

The human form, in this socialized and narcissistic state, cannot be sustained without a high degree of energy being dedicated to upholding this ego-self identity. Warriors strive to store the energy usually expended on upholding this ego-self identity by interrupting the habitual behavioral patterns of self-absorption, i.e., by not attaching or becoming identified with the outcomes of their actions. The human form, denied this energetic sustenance, eventually leaves, with the result that energy is now freed for other possibilities, which naturally transcend the human form.

This shift, this abandonment by the human form is shattering. Picture the scene in The Matrix where Neo is unplugged from his habitual illusory programs, i.e., his hard drive is wiped clean and he nearly goes into shock under the impact. An impeccable warrior is well prepared for this blow, having spent a lifetime interrupting the flow of habitual patterns, using petty tyrants to free awareness from a self that requires judgment to exist, using recapitulation to free energy formerly attached to interpretations feeding self-absorption.

Energy, freed from the human form? Then what! Picture Neo, as the bullets merely bounce off him and he flows, as he no longer participates in that interpretation of reality; he has lost his human form. Let’s see what happens!