Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Treasuring the Lights

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Dear Readers,

Well, the electricity finally came back on yesterday, but we are now in the midst of the next onslaught of bad weather, a Nor’easter, and supposedly this will sit over us for the next four days. I am attempting to get as much work done while the lights are on, and with a certification exam to finalize I am hoping I can get it done before the heavy snow that is now falling causes another outage. We live in a very rural area and even on perfectly fine days the electricity can pop on and off for seemingly no reason whatsoever. We feel lucky because our neighbors across the road did not get turned back on yet, their generator has been humming all night long. So, if all goes well, I intend to have a channeled message posted tomorrow and we’ll get Chuck’s blog up on Saturday, but it all depends on what happens with this current storm. Yesterday we shoveled and used the snowblower on the heavy wet snow for about six hours in order to get out of the garage and up the steep driveway. The trees were bowed to the ground and a large branch landed smack in the middle of the driveway that Chuck had to use the chain saw on because it was too heavy to even budge. And, as usually happens, the snow plows came through and piled a four foot high pile of heavy wet slush at the top of the driveway, a major chore to get through. If it would only stay a little colder the snow is a lot lighter and easier to move out of the way.

Supposedly today’s snow will change to rain in a few hours, but we sit right on the dividing line. It is predicted that if you live to the West you will get snow, to the East rain, and we are in the iffy zone. So, hopefully we will be back on line tomorrow morning. If all goes well, you will see a message from Jeanne posted by noon and if not, our Admin will be leaving you a note as to what is happening.

Until then: Happy snow day!
Jan

Messages from Jeanne

#659 Learning Detachment

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Jeanne Marie Ketchel
Channeled by Jan Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
Today is Monday and we begin a new busy workweek. Although we are still in the middle of winter, spring is in the air. Over the weekend we awoke each morning to the songs of the birds and a small flock of bluebirds came by to inspect the bluebird house we have in our yard. The sun is just beginning to rise as I write this, touching the tree branches with its pink light.

During the night, I dreamed of setting intents and then detaching from them, both for others and then for myself. In my dream, you could purchase and send an intent to the universe regarding another person through Amazon. For instance, you could send intentions for the journey of another, such as intending that they be able to read the signs being offered and aware enough to be able to follow them. Then the sender could purchase their own intent to detach from that person’s choices, to let that person go with the intentions firmly set, but freed of attachment to worry about what the person would do with that intent. It was about being able to fully send another off onto their own journey while also being able to detach one’s own energy from even that intent.

I do know that learning to detach is a very big part of not only doing a recapitulation, but also of life in general, that learning what detachment really means is essential if we are to allow ourselves, and others in our lives, to truly take our personal journeys. Can you talk about the process of detachment again today?

The process of learning what detachment truly means as you progress in life upon that earth is indeed essential. Detachment comes only through experience, through the processes in life that show one how vital and important it really is to step back and allow another to take the journey that they must. However, detachment for self is perhaps the most essential process to accept and allow for. To learn to offer the self protection and private energy, in order to take one’s own journey, may not be easy, especially if one is responsible for many others in life.

It is essential to live your lives as responsible citizens, to make choices and decisions that are caring and mature, that do not leave others behind in the dust, so to speak, until it is time to do so. For there comes a time in every life when choices must be made to move on. In moving on, in making a decision to move on in one’s personal journey, it is inevitable that others may fall behind.

Decisions around family must be made in a mature manner. As your children grow out of your arms, they must discover the world on their own terms. Fully provided by your attention to their growth may they be well prepared for life as adults. Parents must allow their children to take on life, to begin to make choices and to learn what it truly means to be functioning human beings, separate from the parents and the family. Families must allow for the truth of separation and departure, for all must leave the nest.

As you speak of the return of the bluebirds, My Dear Jan, so is this a good example of growth and detachment, as eventually the fledglings will, each year, leave the family nest. The parents, after providing nourishment and housing, will leave the young to discover the world. Using their innate instinctual energy the bluebirds will separate and each take wing to whatever fate awaits. Although the birds do not assign deeper attachment to each other, as humans do, they nonetheless energetically portray valuable traits for comparison.

Their intent each spring is ingrained: to reproduce, to nurture, and then to separate, each bird fully provided and fully ready to take on life. Even though flocks may stay together there is no specialness among the individual birds, all must carry their own weight and follow their instinctual path. Many acts of kindness, and presence of one to another, is still acted out among the bird species, though I express, once again, that specialness of treatment due to family is no longer apparent once the nesting time has been completed. I wish to use this fact as a metaphor for a brief lesson in detachment.

What you are talking about today really ties in with Chuck’s blog on Saturday about the family archetypes and how we all must take our individual journeys.

Yes, the individual journey is what I stress as underlying all of this, for only in realizing the personal journey will one have reason for learning about detachment and be able to offer the self the opportunity to learn what it truly means. Detachment is often misunderstood as neglect or dismissal of another, though this is far from the case. Detachment is in fact the most considerate, compassionate, and loving of actions one can take when one is ready. For in the process of true detachment one has fully understood the meaning of a personal journey; one has fully grasped that each person upon that earth arrives fully loaded with life’s challenges that are ready to be explored and lived in order for that individual to evolve.

If one can arrive at the understanding that life is repeated until the evolutionary track is attained, then one can better understand the need for detachment. If one can gain an understanding of individual energy and the energetic necessities of the individual, as separate from all others, one may attain clarity on the meaning of life as an evolutionary journey. Many times, I have stated that life is a journey, that each person upon that earth has a personal journey to take and that each person has individual challenges that no other can attend to, especially once that person has reached adulthood and often before, depending upon circumstances. Each person has a childhood journey, as well, that is separate from the family, even though the family may be deeply involved. For all upon that earth take an inner journey, known only to that individual, while they simultaneously take the family journey or a collective journey of one sort or another.

Detachment is associated with the journey of the individual. It is a process of taking steps toward owning that individual journey, toward allowing the self to take it, but also to recognizing that all others are offered the same opportunity. All are offered moments of awakening. Although you each may see and recognize your own awakening, do you dare to proceed in the direction of your awakening? Do you see the awakenings others are offered too? And do you wish for them to take the necessary steps of change being shown?

It is quite challenging to take the awakening journey, is it not? All are challenged throughout life to take up the process of individuation. How many times have you personally been challenged? And how many times have you rejected the call? How long did it take before you finally accepted the fact that you would not progress in life until you finally made the move your self, alone, and because it was finally the right road for you to take? How many times do you look upon another with despair at the choices being made? But who truly has made the proper choices at all times? All must stumble through life and learn, in the process, what the meaning of their personal journey is. But how can they do that if they do not take up all the challenges that they must? How can anyone evolve if they do not live out the life they must?

These questions are meant to allow for an understanding of the individual journey as well as the responsibility that each individual has to take that journey. Turn to the self now and ask: Have I truly taken up the challenges of my own personal, individual journey? Am I learning what I must learn about the self, innerly and outerly? Am I taking the deeper journey?

In taking the deeper journey, the ideas of detachment and evolutionary growth will become clearer. But for now, I advise that to allow for detachment to become a familiar idea in everyday life, that you ask the self these simple questions, each day, when necessary: Should I be putting my energy here or there? Is this my journey to take, or is this the responsibility of the other? (Determining self from other is the first step in learning detachment.) Whose journey is this about? Who must take this step? Who is responsible for this action?

I could go on and on with many suggestions for determining the appropriateness of aiding another as they take their journey. But I believe that it is far more important for each one of you to confront the self at each step of your own journey and question the appropriateness of your actions based on the challenges you face. Are you choosing to take the evolving journey or are you choosing to continue avoiding that which clearly has revealed itself to you as the right path to take?

Each day you have personal choices to make. Tiny and insignificant though they may appear to be, they are being offered so that you may grow. Look upon the others in your life. They too are offered equal opportunities for personal growth. Acknowledge that truth, and then step back and let them take up the challenge while you challenge the self. That is allowing the self to learn detachment. And it is allowing the other to be responsible for learning how to guide the self through even the most minor of life’s tasks, learning to evolve and, eventually, to leave the nest, fully ready to take wing upon the individual energy, and this is good.

Chuck's Blog

#658 Chuck’s Place: Your Family is Not Your Family

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Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences! Many of the shamanic and psychological terms used in Chuck’s essays are defined in Tools & Definitions on our Psychotherapy website.

We are born with instincts ready to ensure our survival. A baby is preprogrammed to attach to its parents, to be nurtured and cared for, to ensure survival. Though our soul may choose the family we are born into to present a specific set of challenges necessary for its evolution, a baby has no choice over who its family members are. At the point of birth a baby is a blank slate with a psychic program, what Jung calls the archetypes of the collective unconscious, which are activated and direct the infant in the process of attachment. Hence, the deep emotional process of attachment, which is experienced so personally, is in fact quite impersonally driven. A baby will attach to any appropriate caregivers.

The same impersonal instinctive process is activated in parents when they have a child. Many a mother may exclaim: “I immediately fell in love the instant I saw my child!” An inner maternal archetype is activated in this mother, releasing powerful energy experienced as love, and projected onto her infant. However, in truth, this mother has no clue who this child really is. I am not intending to be offensive with this statement, as it can be argued that a deep relationship is already in place prior to birth. However, a relationship of consciousness with a separate being is simply not yet possible. There is as yet no real personal relationship; the child has yet to discover its personality separate from the mother. A separate entity with full consciousness of self will evolve over time.

Inborn, archetypal processes, quite impersonal in nature, are programs preserved and activated in the collective unconscious to exert a guiding influence and sufficient energy to form and stabilize a family unit. Our human process is no different from that of birds or any other species that instinctively carries out a set of inborn patterns to bring a newborn into the world, i.e., the building of a nest and the feeding of a helpless being.

Relationships and feelings within the family are prompted by specific archetypes. Hence, in truth, a child’s “love” for its parents is largely impersonal, not really a function of an actual conscious relationship. A parent’s love is also largely archetypally driven. Children are programmed to need, love, and idealize their parents. I do not mean to suggest that children and parents don’t get to know each other and love each other as real people; however, a large percent of the bond between parent and child is a function of a collective instinctive program. If the actual parents are what Winnicott * called “good enough” then children will have little difficulty following their instinctive archetypal imperative to “love thy parents.” If a parent is not “good enough,” there results an interruption in an archetypal developmental process that may result, ultimately, in the child growing into adulthood with deep issues of insecurity, anxiety, and depression. For this child/adult it is likely that adult life will be burdened with powerful concerns around parental failures in childhood. However, the actual issue resides within the psyche of the child/adult in its ego’s relationship with parental archetypes whose energies have yet to be harnessed by the ego in a positive way.

Although an adult may seek reparative relationships in adulthood to resolve this archetypal dilemma, this often results in the unfulfilled childhood needs being acted out in adult relationships, leads to endless confusion, and is rarely successful. Equally, an adult child may continuously seek to have its needs met by its family of origin, which in fact can become a lifelong problem, regardless of how old everyone becomes. In therapy, clients with these issues are encouraged to take the hero’s journey, the inner journey, to obtain their birthright in a new relationship with their inner archetypes, fully birthing into adulthood. At the adult stage, a relationship with actual parents cannot solve a grown child’s issues. As adults, we must assume responsibility for ourselves as adults, even when we really don’t feel like adults. That is what makes the inner journey a heroic journey: the journeyer takes on frightening tasks, seemingly beyond its ability, and in the process accrues successes that ultimately transform the hero into a genuine adult.

The truth is, there may in fact be little or no real relationship with actual family members. Real adult relationships can only happen between equals, not with people who use power and position, based of their archetypal roles, as the dominant feature of interaction. The truest relationship between a grown child and a parent would be one based on genuine friendship, affection, and appreciation of each other’s unique identities and journeys, not one based on need and expectation. If we want to have a real relationship with our parents or grown children we must shed the ancient archetypal roles that have become outdated and inappropriate to the essence of life: our soul’s journey. Nobody owes anybody anything. We are all adults with individual destinies to fulfill. Though we once may have shared a powerful bond, personally felt, impersonally driven, once necessary, our real reason for being here is to discover and master our individual challenges. If we can arrive at a place of mutual support and appreciation of each other’s challenges, assuming full responsibility for our own lives, regardless of what did or didn’t happen in the time when the family was deeply connected as a unit, then we can truly have relationships with family beyond the family, when the possibility for real relationship actually begins.

I close with Kahlil Gibran’s poem On Children taken from The Prophet, which captures the essence of what I have attempted to express today.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,

and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

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

Until we meet again,
Chuck

NOTE: Read about Winnicott in Wikipedia.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: 10 Steps in Inner Work & Recapitulation

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With today’s message, Jeanne gives us the tenth step in engaging in a process of inner work and recapitulation that I began channeling on January 29, 2010. The last ten messages have been around this process. To recap they are:

1. Patience
2. Perseverance
3. Kindness
4. Innocence
5. Maturity
6. Commitment
7. Fearlessness
8. Truthfulness
9. Responsibility
10. Letting Go

Each one of the topics above is linked to its original message so that you may more easily find each step and keep them together, valuable tools in the recapitulation process, which is really what inner work is all about. I will also add them to the sidebar, under Guidance, for easy access. Although I do not, at the moment, have the intention of continuing along this line of questioning when I resume our channeling sessions on Monday, you never know. There just might be more to come. But, on the other hand, having engaged and being engaged in the process of recapitulation myself, I think these ten steps are pretty detailed and offer quite a lot to work with for some time to come.

In my own process, which started in earnest about ten years ago, I can attest that I did in fact go through each one of these steps, and they are still useful, because each day as new challenges are presented the process of growth continues, if you choose to engage it. The process never really ends, but advancement is certain. As you do the work, you do change. I can attest to that too.

As I channeled these ten steps over the past several weeks I recognized them as very familiar and very challenging friends, friends that I grew to know intimately as I worked with and through my inner world in a very thorough recapitulation. That recapitulation consisted of removing the veils of time and uncovering and facing memories, fears, ideas, truths and untruths of who I was, who I had become, and why, but also gaining clarity on who I once really was behind the veils and who I had the potential to really become as I allowed the process to unfold. I can say that having taken that journey, having plunged ahead through some very difficult stuff, that you can truly change. I did. I would not be here, doing this today, if I had not dared to take the inner journey.

So, Good Luck as you undertake the deeper inner journey! Feel free to post comments below. There are a lot of people trying to figure out what their lives mean and you never know if by sharing some experience of yours you might help another.

Until next time,
Jan

Chuck Ketchel, LCSWR