#672 The Ultimate Goal

April 5, 2010 Jan Leave a comment

Jan Ketchel channeling Jeanne Marie Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Here we are, it’s Monday again, and a new work week begins. As I sit and feel the energy of today I find that I don’t have any specific questions for you, but I wonder: Do you care to offer us a spring message of guidance?

My Dear One, and All My Readers, do not forget, as you feel and test the energy outside of you, to also feel the unique inner energy that describes who you are, your constant hum of self, which nestles deep inside awaiting visitation. I suggest that this week ahead of you is ideal for gaining inner clarity, inner resolution, and inner calm, and it is ideal energy for taking action based on this inner connection. Inner self must now be acknowledged more fully. Inner self must be given the respect deserved, so hard earned and eagerly awaiting recognition. Inner self speaks words of wisdom. And that is what you must now connect to.

In quiet reserve will your inner hearing and speaking become more pronounced, but it is your outer self who must make the decisions to act, to listen, and to decide that, yes, inner self, you are absolutely right! I am in alignment with you. I dare to act on what you say, for I know, wholeheartedly, that you speak words of truth.

So, set an intent this week, My Dear Ones, to meet in a quiet spot; your inner self and your outer self sitting together in order to make a decision that will propel you both forward. For you know, deep inside, that this is what you need right now. You are at a point of great decision regarding something in your life, something that you both fear and desire, and that something is CHANGE.

Change arrives in many forms. It may be large and looming or small and subtle. It may frighten you because you see it so clearly or it may not even affect you consciously because you have no inkling of it. Yet in both instances you feel restless, uncertain, and obviously desirable of SOMETHING. What is the SOMETHING that has arisen in your life, My Dear Ones? What looms or approaches? What seeks your attention? What comes quietly to ask you to help it emerge from out of you, the same way the flowers and greenery in nature burst forth from the spring ground? What inside you is asking for release? For that is the energy you are now confronted with: the energy of release.

How do you choose to walk upon that earth knowing that SOMETHING desires release? I suggest that some deep inner quiet is going to be most necessary as you move forward in your lives. I suggest that only in finding the inner voice, the deeper self, will you find the answers you seek. You may look outside of you for signs that you are making the right choices, but allow those outer signs to truly reflect your inner self and not the desires of the outer self.

And how will you know what is right? The desires of the inner self will challenge you. They will ask you to break out of your shells, away from your old habits and expectations, to truly embrace a new you. This new you will ask you to stand in solitary repose upon your quiet spot and to feel your independence, your free spirit self, your inner self yearning for freedom. This inner self will ask you to be daring, to be brave, to push aside your fears and to know that whatever decisions and choices for change that you make in your life will be right for you to make, because the inner spirit knows that you will only make the choices that you need to make. But it will leave it up to you to figure out why you are making the choices you are deciding are most right for you to make now, at this current time.

Be advised that no decision is permanent, for if you are looking for permanence then you are not ready for true change. For true change means that everything is in constant flux and evolution, even you, My Dears. Can you accept that your decisions will open new doors in the weeks ahead? Can you enter a world of change and be accepting of what is to come? Can you allow your self to be open and daring, aligned with inner spirit, even though you are afraid?

In conclusion, I suggest that you take in the energy of change in heart-centered breathing, in quiet self-reverie. And, in inner calmness, give the two selves —the inner self and the ego self— some time together so that a consensus may be achieved, so that energies may align for the ultimate goal: CHANGE.

Chuck's Blog

#671 Chuck’s Place: The Warrior’s Affirmation

April 3, 2010 Chuck 6 Comments

I opened The Wheel of Time, that book of knowledge from the shamans of ancient Mexico, written by Carlos Castaneda, to the following quote on page 139, taken from Tales of Power:

Only as a warrior can one withstand
the path of knowledge. A warrior cannot
complain or regret anything. His life is an
endless challenge, and challenges cannot
possibly be good or bad. Challenges are
simply challenges.

A warrior greets the new day affirming his knowledge: I am a being on my way to dying. This affirmation sets the orientation for the day. These might be my final moments in this world, let me soak it up fully. Each encounter might be my last, let me be fully present. What challenges will greet me this day? Where might I shed more of my human form? Who will offend me today, offering me the opportunity to lose my self-importance?

Self-importance is that human demon that supports our notion of being special, of deserving special treatment. It leads to a life of conditions: good and bad, acceptable and unacceptable. It creates a structure to live and die in.

The warrior strives to peel away any attachment to this structure. For the warrior, the intent is to learn to flow, to be able to meet the unknowable without conditions. This world, this life, offers infinite opportunity to learn to flow without conditions.

The warrior welcomes all challenges as opportunities to break down any vestige of specialness. For the warrior, abuse, trauma, regret, hatred, meanness, loss, offense, etc., are the golden tyrants this world offers to hone and prepare our awareness to leap into infinity and journey forward into new worlds and new challenges. The warrior uses these challenges to release all attachment to these experiences, through recapitulation, and embraces the advances in detachment such recapitulated tyrants have afforded. A warrior knows only love, for the transitory and the infinite.

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: Mind Body Release

March 31, 2010 Jan Leave a comment

Last week I was unable to find a theme to write on. I kept looking for something that would be pertinent or significant, both as I worked on my book and as I pondered Jeanne’s answers to the questions I had asked her in Message #668, but alas nothing stuck out. This week, however, several themes have come up.

Today is quiet and the ending of some rainy and very windy weather is in sight. The other night, however, the wind blew harshly all night long. Sudden gusts knocked things over on the deck and rattled the house. It was a difficult night to sleep and I was constantly startled awake. As I lay there listening to the wind, the phrase, the winds of change are upon us, kept running through my head. Today, I present you with the following, beginning with a dream I had during that noisy and windy night:

In this brief dream, I pull open the double doors to our linen closet and stand there looking in at everything neatly folded, everything in its place, neatly compartmentalized on the shelves and I immediately think: “Oh, my mind did this. I don’t want to dream about this! I want to fly!” And with that thought I woke up.

Waking up out of that dream, I realized that what Jeanne had been reviewing over the past few weeks is that change is indeed inevitable, that tomorrow will always arrive, that we cannot stop time from marching on, just as we cannot stop the wind from blowing. The wind will always blow. It is what it does. The challenge we face, each day, is: do we allow ourselves to do the same, to constantly change? Or do we elect to sit tightly in our complacent lives, rearranging our linen closets and pretending that change is not happening? As soon as I called that dream for what it was, a mind conjuring call to stay complacent and caught in old fears, I allowed myself to let go a little more, to acknowledge that I do indeed want to be open, to dare myself to fly, as Jeanne called it the other day.

Do I dare to fly with the winds of change, to flow and become like a leaf on the breeze and truly let go of all the foreign installations, as Chuck calls them, all the neatly compartmentalized linen closets in my life? Where can I let go today? I must constantly ask myself this question rather than huddle in fear at the sounds in the night, of the wind doing what the wind does best. And how do I let go? How do I learn to fly?

As I ask myself these questions I immediately go to my body. Where am I tense, I ask, and where am I holding? Where can I soften? The body is the place that I personally find I must return to, over and over again, in order to truly let go. Releasing physical holdings is a big part of the letting go process. How many yoga classes have I walked out of feeling like I am in a new body, a softer, looser and more flowing body? Thousands of yoga classes that I have attended over the past thirty-five years have continually proven the simple fact that physical release is a vital aspect of allowing for change. Every week I experience this softening, this letting go of the physical, and the result is always startlingly amazing, because even after I have left the yoga class I notice that the softening automatically carries over into the rest of my day. Daily shavasana (relaxation) and daily meditation also suffice when I cannot get to a class or don’t have time for my own practice.

Finding that my physical body held most of my issues was a big discovery for me during my recapitulation process. When I first heard someone suggest, many years ago, that the physical body stores memory I found it hard to believe, but the longer I worked on myself the more true that idea became. Even though I had recapitulated my memories in my conscious mind, I found that my body still held so much more. The body, in its silent way, with its sturdy structure, seemingly so present in the moment, does indeed hold much more than we can see. Once I was ready to go to it and to allow myself to actually feel, asking it to show me what it needed me to learn, I began a more thorough recapitulation. Once I was able to leave the conjuring mind that told me I was done with my recapitulation and enter my body, I learned what it really means to fly, in the sense that Jeanne speaks of.

During one Embodyment Therapy session, which helped in the process of physical release, Jeanne came to me and said the following: “Let the bad out, keep only the good, only the essentials.” In a subsequent session she came again and guided me through the removal process of old memories, old ghosts as I saw them during the session, which I documented afterwards in my journal:

Jeanne is with me, pulling old ghosts out of me like tissues out of a box, all strung together. My body responds to the expulsion of them, reacting to the tearing sound each one makes as it leaves, the sound of a tissue being pulled from its slot in the box. Jeanne reminds me: “Remember, I told you it’s all about change, getting rid of the old that you have no use for, making room for the new.” I experience the physical ripping out, as if actual body tissue is being pulled out of me. It is quite painful, not easy to handle. I call to Jeanne to help me get through it. “Take my hand,” she says. “I will take you where you need to go. You aren’t dying, it’s just a removal of all the old dead stuff that you don’t need, dead issues, bad stuff, all the leftover memories and feelings that will bother you if left behind.” It is like having radical surgery. I am not sure that the pulling out of the old ghosts, the old demons, feels good. It feels like being disemboweled, that something is being yanked out of me, but I can’t stop it and I don’t want to either, because I know it is the right thing to do. I see the horrors of my life with my own eyes. I see every horrible aspect of the past as it gets pulled out and dragged away. In a quick blink of an eye everything that has ever happened to me gets pulled out and leaves my body. The process is fast, wrenchingly painful, but I go with it. I let go. I let it happen. I try to follow, to see where the ghosts go, but I am not allowed to follow. I am forced to stay in my body and experience the removal. (From a session in 2004)

This experience came to mind again during the night as the wind blew and the old demons fear and worry crept into bed with me, attempting a takeover. My dream, having jolted me away from them, prepared me for the winds of change that were blowing outside, reminding me to let go again of the old, to flow with the inevitable. I dozed and startled awake throughout the night, as the winds howled, never quite able to rest deeply, but at each awakening I would remind myself to physically relax, to physically let go. I repeated Jeanne’s recent words of guidance, to let go to the inevitable, finding that my intent to change had to be focused, as usual, on releasing physical holdings.

Self-hypnosis, repeating mantras, doing full body relaxation, quiet moments of breathing and calming meditation, as well as taking yoga classes, (and many other modalities of healing and relaxation) all offer release and bring attention to the physical body. If none of these processes are accessible or appealing, then simply notice the body and ask: Where am I holding? And then let it go and see what happens. And, as Jeanne has suggested, go deeper each time you ask the question, allowing for release and change to not only become a mind process, but a physical one as well.

Until next week,
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

#670 Choose Your Attitudes & Embody Your Wishes

March 29, 2010 Jan Leave a comment

Jan Ketchel channeling Jeanne Marie Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Currently, I am only channeling you for our readers once a week so that I can devote more time and energy to my own work, which is going well. I have certainly been feeling the energy of change and have been attempting to put it to good use. While it feels like a very creative and promising period in human history it also feels precipitously precarious. I feel that if we are not careful we could miss a very big opportunity. Can you discuss this today? Is there something that we, as human beings, are supposed to be grasping now that remains just out of reach? Because that is what it feels like. How do we, on an individual level, take advantage of this time for our personal evolutions and that of our divided world as well?

My Dear, you ask quite a question, but I get your gist and feel your frustration also, for that is what lies at the core of mankind at this brief moment in time. Frustration may be utilized for good, for the spark that is needed in order to jumpstart a stagnant situation. I suggest looking at the self, the personal situation, and using the energy of now to precipitate change. Precipitous, as you use the word, implies standing on the verge, and this is where you do indeed find yourself today, both individually and universally.

I would suggest that it would not be a bad idea to do a full evaluation of the self as an independent being who is also a member of a collective. No matter what your personal domestic situation is, My Dear Readers, you all belong to a larger group of family and community. The collective energy of the world around you impacts you no matter how busy, how contented, how isolated, how detached or how connected you may feel. And you impact it in return, of course.

A personal assessment of how you are using your time, your energy, your free time, and your daily activities in the world is the opportunity to channel your energy, so that you may take full advantage of this time of change. Perhaps you might question the self as follows:

What is truly important to me?
What do I truly want?
Who do I want in my life, and who do I need to remove myself from?
What energy resonates with mine and where is my own energy being drained?
How do I see myself in the near future?
Am I ready for big changes, or small changes?
Do I act as I speak?
Do I really care about my world and my impact on it?
Have I taken time for myself lately, for my inner self, myself as one part of the whole, of nature and the universe?
Have I found my spiritual connection yet?
Am I happy?
Am I truly alive in the way I most desire?
Am I daring myself, every day, to go beyond my limitations?
Am I facing my fears and allowing my inner spirit self to walk in my shoes and show me what I have been missing?

I could go on for quite some time posing questions, but I realize that I might make you more frustrated than you now are. You must learn that your emotions are your signs of discontent, of issues with the old self who continues to be in the forefront of your life, though your efforts have been to disengage this well-worn self and allow a new self to come forth and speak out for a change. When frustrations, moods, and discomforts arrive it is time to take advantage of such catalysts of change.

The energy of now is quite available for change, but it can go either way. Change will always happen, but by your intent, by your personal energy, you can make that inevitable change be for good, be advantageous, heart-felt and heart-directed. You have the power to affect the right kind of change. Every one of you upon that earth has the ability, simply by your conscious thoughts, to change the self and the world, for good. Positive intent and thinking as catalysts for change are not hocus-pocus, but real-time interventions that, if enacted, will have impact.

As I spoke of last week, you are each personally responsible for taking on the challenges of the self. In order to shift the self, one must dare the self to step out of complacency and the old ways of doing things and force new means of action upon the self by asking the self to breathe more deeply, to sit more calmly, to take in the earth energy beneath your feet. These are all actions of significance. To notice nature and to truly evolve with it, you begin to recognize that you truly belong there. But you are also responsible for everything that happens there upon that earth, and by your thoughts, your intents, your desires, your truths made known, you may afford the self new life.

Seek new life at all times. Think differently. Act differently. Accept the self and others with a new attitude. Be different, and you will notice that the world outside of you will respond differently as well.

Hatred cannot survive in a desert, for it will die without new hatred to fuel it. Without new despair, despair will dissipate. Without new love, love will also die. Choose your attitudes. Embody your wishes. Be what you most desire. Become the person you dream of becoming, and you will become that person.

It is not so hard to change the way you act, think, perceive, believe, or intend, but it takes a personal decision to be different, and that is what you must each seek now in order for the precipice you now each stand upon to impact you in a positive way. You can choose to fall, or you can choose to fly. It’s up to you.

Chuck's Blog

#669 Chuck’s Place: Ecstasy

March 27, 2010 Chuck Leave a comment

First, a Chuck-ku:

Wind blows, seeds disperse.
Earth softens, flowers emerge.
Divine Ecstasy!

We work very hard each day to stay on top of our responsibilities, to sleep well, to get up on time, perhaps to exercise, to stay abreast of world events, or keep them at safe bay so as not to infiltrate the calm, to be prepared for the day, to show up on time, or quietly sneak away. At the end of the day we want to feel good about our accomplishments, our challenges met, as we plan for tomorrow’s activities or weekend’s repose. These are all efforts of consciousness: decision making, planning, will power, efforts to create structure in our lives. But where’s the juice?!

Where is the joy, the electricity, the experiences that transport us beyond our hard earned structures to a deeper communion with life, a true experience of rapture, wholeness and union with the divine? We all crave this experience, this melding of consciousness with the divine instinctual energy that lies at the depths of our being. This experience we seek, to complete our day in wholeness, is the experience of ecstasy.

The Greek roots of the word ecstasy are ex meaning out of or to stand apart from, and stasis meaning stationary or stagnant. Thus, ecstasy is the experience outside the box of our hard earned ego structures. To get there we must loosen or dissolve the rigid static structures of our egos, stand outside our rules, our strict rationality, our thinking processes, to encounter the energetic fluidity and unpredictability of our deeper emotional divine selves. The challenge is to step outside the box and yet remain fully conscious and present, flowing with this intense ecstatic energy.

The tendency of the ego is to either repress the divine impulse due to its intensity and fear of loss of control or for the ego to volitionally check out, as for example in a drunken binge where ecstatic energy overtakes consciousness in a frenzied reverie. In either case, there is no union, and no true experience of wholeness and divine rapture.

How can we build a solid bridge capable of safely channeling such powerful energy? To construct this bridge, we must engage all the powers of ego and consciousness. Without consciousness the experience of the divine energy is a tsunami that overtakes all structures or simply passes over without notice. How do we build a solid foundation for our bridge? One stone at a time.

One stone is to recognize the stirrings of emotion within as we move through our daily lives. Perhaps we might experience an impulse, a feeling of warmth, of appreciation, of love, of excruciating tenderness in an interaction with another. Can we allow ourselves to stretch and feel the full energy of this emotion? Perhaps we feel quite vulnerable, overly sensitive, seeking to automatically shut down, cut off, and move away from feeling the energy of our experience. Beyond the self, might we stretch ourselves, allowing our egos to lay down a stone by actually expressing out loud our feeling to another? To allow the self to withstand and be reshaped by the energetic aftermath of this wave of emotion is bridge building.

In another instance, we might find ourselves moved by a divine impulse to dance, to sing, to be playful, or silly. Can we lay another welcome stone to this divine energy by stretching our rigid egos to be moved to action by this impulse?

Perhaps we partake of a sip of wine. Dionysus, the personification of divine ecstasy, is also the Greek god of wine. Even the Christian mass includes a sip of wine as a channel to divine communion with God. That sip of wine immediately invites the experience of another world. Boundaries disappear and the experience of everything as energetically interconnected emerges. However, can we stop at one sip, at one glass? Can we retain our consciousness and experience interconnectedness in a modest way? This challenge is certainly another brick in the foundation of our bridge to ecstasy. Too often the craving for more divine contact, so deeply desired, results in inviting too much energy to travel on an incomplete structure ending in oblivion or divine madness.

Ecstasy is its own crucible, its own alchemical oven, its own cross. Pushing the confines of the structure, which can ultimately increase one’s joy, is a painful and lengthy process. Take, for example, love and sex, a very challenging combination, a cornerstone of our bridge to ecstasy. In the beginning of relationship, when nature provides us with an unearned “in love” experience, we are afforded the divine rapture of ecstasy as the boundaries of our individual egos are stretched to merge with our “soul mate.” In this time, love and sexual energy flow freely. If this divine spark acquires duration and becomes a true relationship we are ultimately expelled from the garden. The gift of ecstasy must now be earned through the building of a bridge of conscious relationship. The more we get to know our partner, the more familiar they become, often, the more difficult sex becomes.

Love is a product of consciousness. Love takes work, hard work. Encountering and accepting the truth of our “human” soul mate, as well as revealing our own most vulnerable selves, is an extremely challenging process. Meanwhile, familiarity often drives sexual energy underground. Love and familiarity bring a lot of bright light to a relationship. The spontaneous, unpredictable flow of primal sexual energy seeks the darkness, where play, connection, and abandon are spared watchful, judgmental eyes and a thinking mind. To be conscious and present in abandon, without thought, is the crucible of love and sex. To merge the familiar and the spontaneous, the divine and the earthy, the spirit and the flesh, is a powerful, ecstatic moment. This is definitely possible if there is commitment, but it is often a painful, vulnerable, and frustrating process where the energies seek to escape the containment required for ultimate transformation and ecstatic union.

Stretching and softening the boundaries of the ego to accommodate and join with the divine spontaneous impulse is the essence of ecstasy. Yes, to be able to stand, which is to hold onto consciousness, outside the static structure of the ego, is to open to the flow of divine energy, true ex-stasis. In this piece, I selected the metaphor of a sturdy bridge built stone by stone to represent the place of standing amidst divine energy. The opportunities to lay these stones offer themselves daily in a myriad of ordinary life circumstances where the spark of divine impulse is felt subtly or profoundly within the heart.

Jung chose a different metaphor, that of a cork floating on the ocean. The cork being the place of standing, or consciousness floating upon the boundless, infinite flux. Despite the disparity in size of cork to ocean, Jung would argue that without consciousness there is no wholeness, there is no divine ecstasy. Rumor has it that Jung’s final words, spoken to Marie-Louise von Franz, were: “Let’s have a really good red wine tonight!” Wine or no wine, I suggest that you make your experience di-vine!