Category Archives: Jan’s Blog

Welcome!

Currently, I put most of my energy into the weekly channeled messages, the daily Soulbytes, and the completion of The Recapitulation Diaries. An occasional blog does still get written when the creative urge strikes. Archived here are the blogs I wrote for many years about inner life and outer life, inner nature and outer nature. Perhaps my writings on life, as I see it and experience it, may offer you some small insight or different perspective as you take your own journey.

With gratitude for all that life teaches me, I share my experiences.

Jan Ketchel

Jan's Blog, Recapitulation

How to Heal

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I begin with the premise that all pain and illness, mental and physical, stem from psychological disharmony. If the psyche, the energetic manifestation of the spirit in the human mind, becomes disrupted, or infected, the result is disharmony, dis-ease, disturbance within the entire self: the body, the mind, and the spirit.

There is always a light at the end of the tunnel of darkness…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

A Path of Recapitulation

There are many paths to healing. I took the path of recapitulation to heal from Complex PTSD, which stemmed from 16 years of sexual abuse that first occurred in early childhood and ended when I was 18. Those were my formative years and during that time I was inundated with not only the brutal sexual abuse but also the intense psychological repercussions of that abuse.

The human capacity to endure and survive, however, is incredible, but at what expense?

What my child self could not handle, either physically or mentally, my psyche and spirit handled, offering several pathways of protection so that life could continue. This is common in cases of abuse, where the body and the mind work in conjunction to hide from the fragile ego that which is harmful, painful, confusing, or damaging. In my case, all memory of what happened to me was wiped clean. At the time, it saved me, but later it came back to haunt me.

Hints of what had happened, though deeply buried within the person I became, began to arise, bringing with it the pain and discordancy that had been long buried. That’s when I realized I needed to find out, at the deepest of levels, why I had so much disharmony within myself, why I had so much physical pain and mental anguish, why I was so afraid of life, to the point of destroying all I had worked so hard for, all the paths of potential success that I refused to embark upon. Why was I so self-sabotaging, so self-negating, so self-deprecating? Why couldn’t I just be normal?

That was when recapitulation, as a path to healing, came into my life, a path of not only remembering, but of reliving, releasing, and resolving—a path to freedom.

An Adult Self

The first step before beginning a recapitulation is to shore up the adult self. A strong adult self in the house, in you, will help keep you focused and steady as you begin to walk the path of recapitulation.

During recapitulation you will often be in two worlds at once, in the present and in the past, and your adult self will keep you balanced, keeping one foot in each world so that you can continue to be fully functional and present in your everyday life.

Even if recapitulation proves not to be your path in this lifetime, it’s best to shore up that adult self anyway, it will make for a life that is more tolerable and steadier. And that adult self will help keep your pain at bay with good suggestions and tactics rather than those that further damage.

I had a good mature adult self already well established when I began my recapitulation. So that was not going to be a problem for me. And once I was given the opportunity to find out what was so wrong with me, I dove in, wanting more than anything to get to the bottom of things.

Shining a Light

The next step is to bring the light into the darkness of the self. This is scary because you may not know what you are going to find. Just be open. For once you begin to walk the path of recapitulation that light is going to be very important. Things will come to you, challenging you to take a closer look, showing you where you need to go, and the only way you will be able to fully know them is by bringing in the light.

When you bring the light into the darkness, things change. For the first time you begin to see the truth, and the truth is what matters. The light reveals the truth and the darkness disappears.

Trusting the Journey

As things arise, trusting in the journey becomes the next step.

Keep in mind that recapitulation is a healing journey. Keep in mind also that you are well protected and guided as you recapitulate, for, as an ancient practice, all those who have gone before you and carved the path are energetically supporting you on your journey. That’s a lot of positive energy!

Letting Go

As you walk the path of recapitulation you will be challenged to let things go, to let go of the comforts that you once used to protect yourself. This is a crucial step, for what once saved you in an old way becomes a blockage to a new path of healing.

Letting go means being free to embrace the fullness of your true self, the self that is waiting for you at the end of the tunnel of darkness.

As you let go of old ideas of the self, as you let go of shame and blame, of the pain and the anguish, as you shed all that once meant so much to you, you might feel as if you are disintegrating, but this is good disintegration, like a snake shedding its old skin and finding that it still exists in its wholeness, though the shedding of that old skin took quite an effort. It’s the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis, the chick from the egg, the seventeen-year locust emerging from the ground, having climbed through the dark earth to emerge into the light, against all odds.

Healing

I believe that we can all heal, from the deepest and most traumatic events and illnesses, those that physically challenge us and those that mentally challenge us.

If and when we are ready, our healing path will show up and ask us to take the journey toward healing. If we are not ready, that’s okay. It might not be the work of this lifetime. In the meantime, work on shoring up that adult self previously mentioned.

But, I suggest, that if you are hit over the head with something about yourself that knocks you off your feet, grab a light and take a look at it, and see where it leads. It might just be what you’ve always been looking for, your true self and the truth of yourself!

Sometimes the best way to heal is to stop seeking, to stop looking so hard, running to this path and that, thinking that this new cure will be the one, and to instead just sit down and wait to see what your spirit brings you. For the truth is that your spirit is with you always, has always been with you and knows you better than anyone. Your spirit has all the answers you seek. Ask you spirit to guide you.

The Recapitulation Diaries

I wrote The Recapitulation Diaries to show that full healing from Complex PTSD is possible, that even though you suffered greatly—more than I did, I’m sure—you too can heal.

It’s not an easy journey, but what journey is? You’ve already taken the hardest part of it, now you just have to remember so that you can clear your energy of all that infects you, for to go back to my beginning premise, all pain and illness, mental and physical, stems from psychological disharmony, from infection that has intercepted our energy field and contaminated us. Once we heal ourselves of those infections of energy a life of wonder awaits.

I won’t say any more today, though there is so much more to the healing path of recapitulation. My books tell the story. I would not be here today had I not taken that journey. That I am pretty sure of, or at least I would not be here writing this to you today, from the bottom of my heart, hoping that you too may heal.

Sending you love and healing energy,

Jan

The Recapitulation Diaries

Jan's Blog

The Execution of Lisa Montgomery: Contemplation of a Soul’s Journey

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I woke up at 1:11 AM. I wondered at the significance of the time, often described as a divine sign. What did it mean? Something must be going on in the world, I thought. I am often struck by how something as simple as waking up and looking at the clock in the middle of the night has deeper meaning.

I was not surprised to read the news this morning that between the hour of 1 and 1:38 AM a woman was being executed on death row, and not just any woman but a woman who had suffered debilitating sexual abuse that had led her on a sadly devolving journey. She had committed a horrendous murder and was serving time in prison for that murder, but her story is an example of so many stories, stories that are never told, never exposed and never contemplated. Many people, women especially, have been sexually abused, but you would never know it because they will never mention it. In polite society, we prefer not to talk about sexual abuse.

One of the reasons I wrote The Recapitulation Diaries was to bring the topic to the table, in explicit detail, for how can we ever heal as a society if we do not talk about the dark side of society? How can we leave the children of sexual abuse to carry the dark secret but not deal with it ourselves?

As a child of sexual abuse, I know intimately some of the things that Lisa Montgomery endured and suffered. I have personally heard the stories of other people who have been sexually abused. There are as many stories as there are people, one story worse than the next. As a spiritual person, and after many years of work on myself to heal from the trauma of sexual abuse, I look for deeper meaning, in both a person’s life and a person’s soul journey.

We are all on a journey of the soul. I didn’t know this myself until I recapitulated what had happened to me in childhood and began to see a bigger picture, to understand that my journey through life was a learning process so that my soul could evolve. Some of us have come into this world with great challenges to face because we are prepared to take them on, because our soul decided that it could handle it. There is a part of me that always says, “I can handle anything!” I believe it’s that part of me that decided it could take on the life I am now living. Had I failed at the task I set for myself this time around, I’m sure I’d give it another go in the next life.

Perhaps Lisa Montgomery’s soul decided it could handle the life she lived too. Perhaps she learned great things in her lifetime that have advanced her on her soul’s journey; only she will know for sure. But if Lisa Montgomery’s life is to be an example for the rest of us, we have to ask the question: What are we to learn from the life of Lisa Montgomery?

Her story brings us back to the subject of sexual abuse. Her life story points out to us all that we have forgotten something, that we have let too many people suffer the consequences of a society that won’t face its dark side. We let others carry the burden of the dark secrets of our collective soul.

The tragic unfolding of Lisa Montgomery’s life spread a wide net, for it also had tragic repercussions for other’s, especially for the family of the young woman she murdered, the child she kidnapped, and all the members of that extended family. If we are to make sense of this tragedy we must look to ourselves for answers.

If we are to learn anything from Lisa Montgomery’s life it is that the subject of sexual abuse must not be put back under the table. Is her story even still news today? How many more children must suffer a lifetime of traumatic repercussions because their stories are not stories suitable to talk about?

Are we going to let the children of sexual abuse continue to bear the burden of the dark side of humanity? Are we going to face our own life challenges head on, with a bigger picture in mind, so that we may become contributing members of a society that refuses to sweep the disturbing parts of being human under the table?

May Lisa Montgomery’s journey show us a new path to healing, for all of us, but especially for those like her, the children of sexual abuse.

Sending love,

J. E. Ketchel, Author of The Recapitulation Diaries

Jan's Blog, Recapitulation

Recapitulation & Higher Attunement

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The real lesson of trauma is not that it grants us leave to be victims to be compensated, or survivors to be admired, but that it offers us a gateway to experiences of our Higher Self, offering us a way to experiences of our true nature as energy. Every bad memory is a doorway to accessing the lessons learned during our traumatic experiences, for indeed there is a lesson of Higher Consciousness in everything. Our journey through trauma has the potential to show us the way to achieving that state of Higher Consciousness on a more regular basis.

Recapitulation is about aligning with spirit and getting attuned to its potential, now, in a conscious state, rather than in the unconscious state of trauma. This is what all my books are about, recognizing life as a journey to higher attunement. Recapitulation is about taking the conscious journey to getting there, from dissociation from spirit to union with spirit. No matter the vehicle or method that gets us there, it’s what we’re all seeking, conscious union with our wholeness, the powerful spirit energy that we are.

Are we lucky? That which once made us a victim or a survivor has the greater potential, if we dare take it to the next level, to catapult us far beyond ordinary reality and ordinary states of consciousness. In recapitulation we learn how to do this with awareness. What once happened to us in a dissociated state now has the potential to teach us what we are truly capable of. How did we survive the horrific things that happened to us? Were we just the lucky ones? The answers all lie within us.

In recapitulating, in facing our fears and going beyond the defenses that have kept us safe and protected, we offer ourselves the gateway to our personal truths but also to attunement with our personal Higher Self, our state of Higher Consciousness, our true state of energy, light, and wisdom. It’s a journey not for the faint of heart but for the true warrior that lies within. And of course you have that warrior inside of you, it’s what kept you alive and still does!

Sending  you love and wishing you well on your journey to wholeness,

Jan

J. E. Ketchel, Author of The Recapitulation Diaries

Jan's Blog, Recapitulation

An Excerpt From “Dreaming All The Time”

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Here is an excerpt from the next book in The Recapitulation Diaries. I am a few months away from finishing the recapitulation. If you’ve been following my experiences and reading my books you might remember it was a three-year-long journey of intense inner work. As the third year was nearing its end, the recapitulation intensified, my old self and my old world attachments not willing to give up so easily. As they say, it’s always darkest before dawn. Here is the excerpt:

February 4, 2004

I wake in a panic at six a.m., mind and body vibrating so hard I fear that I’m shattering, breaking apart into a million tiny pieces, turning to dust between the covers of my bed. Why now, when I’ve worked so hard to bring myself together? I breathe and breathe and breathe, willing myself back together with every breath I take. Pushing the panic away, I remind myself of why I’m doing this recapitulation: for life, for wholeness, for oneness, for the joining of my two souls. And then I remember that I woke in the night in fiery pain! I cried, calling out, “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” whimpering as the pain tore through me. Gradually the pain stopped and I fell back to sleep. It was like a bad dream, but it was no dream at all; it was an old memory searing through me.

Why am I still suffering such pain? What is the point of it? And why did I feel I had to apologize? I was the one in pain and yet I felt I had to apologize, and for some crazy reason it worked, it made the pain go away. Now I lie still, just breathing, turning myself over to the safe hands of my guides, knowing that they won’t let me die. It’s not my time. It’s time now to finish this healing journey.

Eventually, I’m able to move my body and get out of bed. If I can just get through the next few days and months, I’ll be fine, I tell myself. I make coffee and set my sights on the day ahead. I have a meeting with an outdoor art committee, an article to write, an illustration to do, and a decorative painting job to start, so all of that will keep me busy. The key is to remain busy.

To whom was I apologizing last night? To the abuser? It felt as if I were apologizing to him for killing him off, for having to commit this act of war against him, for we are at war as I seek to take back my energy. Or perhaps I was apologizing to my inner girls because we are leaving those old familiar places of pain and comfort, of fear and depression, where everything is so known and predictable, and so strangely safe. It’s striking how pain and comfort are so terribly linked. But the apology worked, the pain eased, and I fell easily back to sleep.

“Something wants you to go back,” Chuck said to me yesterday. “Do the movements [Magical Passes] to counter it. Every time you go through a major shift something wants to pull you back. Fight it.”

Everything is shifting and changing now and I’m feeling the full brunt of it, a head-on collision of the old and the new.

© 2020 J. E. Ketchel, Dreaming All The Time, Volume 5 of The Recapitulation Diaries

Jan's Blog, Recapitulation

Psyche & Soma

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Psyche, in Greek, means soul or spirit, especially that part of the soul which manifests in the mind, in the conscious and unconscious parts of our wholeness. Soma refers to the body, especially to the nerve cells of the body. Psychosomatic is a combination of these two root words, meaning that which the spirit manifests in the body.

In my books, comprising the series called The Recapitulation Diaries, I write often about the incessant pain in my body. As real as the pain was, excruciating and debilitating at times, I discovered that it was really messages from my spirit, my psyche, directing me to what needed attention as I progressed on my journey. I discovered that during recapitulation what is manifesting in the body must be explored.

At first, I had almost every pain checked out by one doctor or another. I was doing this long before I even knew about recapitulation or began my journey of change and transformation. I’d go to a doctor and describe my pain, but there was never any diagnosis that those doctors could come up with to pinpoint what was causing the pain.

When I was in my early forties, I developed a skin cancer, a small red spot that turned out to be two types of cancer, basal cell and squamous cell. It’s unusual to have two types of cancer manifesting in the same area, the doctor who did the biopsy told me, but as soon as I had developed the red spot, and as soon as I was informed that it was cancer, I knew immediately that it had nothing to do with my exposure to the sun as a child, as was repeatedly questioned. I knew it had to do with what was festering inside me, that there was something much worse, that that little red dot was just the beginning of something far greater.

I knew, instinctively, that I had some dark thing inside me that I had been trying to forget my entire life. By the time I was forty, I had been pretty successful at forgetting, though I suffered in numerous physical, mental, and spiritual ways. That small red spot was just another indication that I might have to remember.

It was then that I acknowledged that my psyche was hiding something from me. It had protected me up until that point, but if I was to not get more skin cancer, or any other disease, I knew the time had come to face what it really meant. It took another five or six years before I finally took the leap, the leap into my own darkness and what lay there waiting for me to discover.

Pain is an indicator that the body has something to tell us. It might indeed be that we have a serious illness, or it might be that it is trying to protect us from that which we do not want to know. Pain can be a defense against that which is too painful to know.

As I recapitulated, I began to look at the pain in my body as a message from my spirit. I would ask it to show me what it knew, to guide me where to go next. I developed nerves of steel so I could face what my body had to tell me, what it knew and what it meant.

As I faced the pain and asked my body to be my guide, I also discovered that I always had the strength to face what it had to show me. I knew that it would not be asking me to face it if I was not ready. Whenever the pain showed up, and it showed up incessantly, relentlessly right to the very end of my recapitulation, I used it to heal.

That’s a strange idea, to imagine that our pain is actually our healing balm, but it’s true. Without my pain showing me what I needed to face I might not have freed my spirit and my body from the torment of years of abuse that had been so well-hidden inside me.

I often thanked my body and my unconscious for showing me what it knew, for revealing to me the truths not only of my own past but the truths of what the spirit and body are truly capable, how they inform and guide, how they really only want us to heal and discover the magical beings that we all are.

Even today, I still use my psyche and soma to guide me. I constantly question any pain I might have. Often, I realize, it is what I call “stuck energy,” a thought, idea, or attachment, a conjuring of the mind that I’ve latched onto that does not belong to me, stuck energy that needs to be moved along and out of my body, tension that when allowed to naturally release brings instantaneous relief.

Or it might be something that my psyche, my spirit wants me to be alert to, something that needs recapitulation. Perhaps one of the biggest lessons of recapitulation is that we are always being asked to grow and evolve, to confront our deepest issues and resolve them so we can move on into even greater freedom.

Our minds and our bodies, our psyche and soma, are amazing partners as we take our journeys through life, as we seek to know ourselves at the deepest of levels and as we seek to find the meaning in our lives.

I highly recommend any of the books by Dr. John Sarno, especially The Mind Body Prescription, as guides to understanding how psyche and soma work together to bring us to consciousness, to help us heal.

Our defenses are incredibly strong but our spirit is stronger. That is what we discover as we recapitulate.

I wish you all well on your journeys, and I send you love,

J. E. Ketchel, Author of The Recapitulation Diaries