Category Archives: Jan’s Blog

Welcome!

Archived here are the blogs I write 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

A Day in a Life: Everything Is The Journey—The Journey Is Everything

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Reflections are found everywhere, like this tree of life in a leaf of Swiss chard... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Reflections are found everywhere, like this tree of life in a leaf of Swiss chard…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Our lives unfold a day at a time. A week goes by and then another. Months pass, years pass and suddenly we find that we have lived for decades. I remember being thrilled to say that I had lived for a decade when I was ten. How incredible that I could look back over a decade of my own life and see the journey I had taken! That wonder stayed with me as another decade passed and then as I reached 25, my first quarter century. I still look back in wonder, fascinated by where I have been, by everything I have experienced, all the people I have encountered, all the things I have been drawn to, all that has crossed my path, everything a part of my journey.

I have always considered life to be a solo journey, and I still believe that, that we must take our own journey through life and learn what we as individuals must learn. But I also know that we are never alone, that everything in life is accompanying us on our journey.

When I looked back at the age of ten I felt ancient, as if I had indeed come far, on a long journey that no one else had ever taken, and for the most part that was true, for all of our journeys are unique, as unique as we each are. At the same time, I could not imagine being alone in the world. I still needed my parents, my family and the social world I lived in to nurture me and prepare me for the rest of my life.

Even in less that ideal situations we receive something from our families of origin, whether it be determination or strength of character, tenacity to survive or the will to move on. Although I thought many times about running away as a child, and once did attempt it at fifteen, I realize now that in staying in place and bearing the tension of my life as it was I was preparing myself for something greater, a future I could not even imagine at the time.

In order to understand our journey we must first know who we are, what lies inside us, in our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual self. Only in traversing that journey, the inner journey into the vast unknown self, will we be ready to understand the deeper meaning of our lives. We can take this deeper journey guided by trained professionals, by spiritual and intuitive helpers, but the real work lies in going always deeper within, in facing what only we know lies in our depths. No one else can take our deeper journey for us, just as we cannot ride on the coattails of the journey of another. If we are to live fulfilling lives as both physical and spiritual beings, we must dare ourselves to take the solo journey, even as we let it take us.

As we look back over our lives, over the years and decades we have traveled thus far, it is important to note that everything was meaningful. Even a seemingly insignificant encounter holds some note of import. People journey with us, for instance, some encounters more fleeting than others, but all of them are significant. Perhaps the time comes for parting, the journey together done. Sometimes it is up to us to decide to move on, at other times others leave us.

Sometimes the mirror shatters... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Sometimes the mirror shatters…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Everyone who is, or has ever been, part of our journey has something to teach us. People mirror things to us; they point out our core issues, our fears, our vulnerabilities. They tell us the truth, though it is often hard to hear and even harder to accept. When we are finally ready, we somehow discover the truth on our own. What has been pointed out to us our entire lives—by others, by the choices we have made, by the things we have kept at bay—finally makes sense. All of this is part of the journey, the solo journey that we must all take through life.

The real truth is that whether we are consciously taking the solo journey or not, we are taking it anyway. If we are alive, we are on that journey. Over time, as our egos have nothing to gain and our spirits nothing to lose, we comfortably take off.

Taking the journey,
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: In Retreat

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Dear Readers,

I am taking a week’s retreat from the usual blog writing schedule, enjoying the heat, the cooling waters, the air, the earth, the stars and moon. Back next week as usual. In the meantime enjoy our daily Soulbytes, posted early each morning on our Facebook page, a reading of the energy of each day as it comes to us.

Staying in the Tao. Hope you are too!
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: A Knock At The Door

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Who knows what's behind the door? - Art by Jan Ketchel
Who knows what’s behind the door?
– Art by Jan Ketchel

I dreamed last night. In the dream I was waiting for something to arrive, a delivery was going to be made. Suddenly I heard loud knocks on the front door, two vigorous raps as loud as gunshots followed by two more, equally loud. When I heard the first two knocks I imagined that it was the delivery that I was awaiting, but as I heard the second two I woke up, sure that it meant something else.

I lay awake in bed wondering if someone was indeed outside the front door in the middle of the night. I waited to hear more rapping but none followed.

As I dozed off again I remembered that loud knocks in dreaming are often an indication of spirit calling, such knocks the precursor to going out of body. I also sensed that the dream was a premonition of something to come, that some news would come in this manner.

I acknowledge that my spirit is preparing me for something. Perhaps it’s asking me to allow myself to go out of body, to not get startled by the knocks in the night but to allow them to take me to a higher level of dreaming. Perhaps it’s letting me know that change is coming, or that I will be startled by the arrival of something, expected but unexpected as well, for the loudness of the knocks was startling.

I’m not too concerned. I refuse to let myself worry over something that is only fiction at this point. Instead I’m determined to let life unfold as it will, for I know I have no control over what happens, in fact I believe that it’s wrong to interfere with life’s unfolding. I am, however, focused on maintaining my awareness of this dream message, for I believe it is a message. It might not be at all what I think though, and so I am open to what unfolds over the next few days and weeks.

I have had premonitions many times before in dreams, things that eventually unfolded just as I had dreamed. Sometimes our dream messages are very specific and sometimes they are metaphorical. It’s hard to know which they are until life’s unfolding shows us the answer.

Spirit asks us to emerge and finally live this time around... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Spirit asks us to emerge and finally live this time around…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Training our awareness, reminding ourselves to remember and to document our experiences, is a good way to connect our dreaming experiences with our living reality. They are connected, but we only realize this as we dare to ask ourselves to remember and stay alert, to value our dreaming experiences, allowing them to enhance our waking experiences.

In the end, I choose to take my dreaming experience as true on all levels. Yes, it’s a premonition, but it’s also a call from my spirit because I know that my spirit is always calling. It called me to do my recapitulation, and it continues to challenge me to be fully present and aware, whether I’m dreaming or awake.

Awaiting the delivery,
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Life As Art Form

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I seek to achieve balance, all the time... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
I seek to achieve balance, all the time…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

As an artist and writer I fully experience my creativity. When I am creating something I am totally focused on what I am doing; I am in the zone. Everything else slips away and life is just me and what I am working on. Creative energy runs through me and I willingly go along for the ride.

I have a deep need for creative perfection, but I’ve also learned over the years to recognize when a piece is done, to instinctively know when it’s time to stop, to put down my tools and release myself from the creative surge and to also let go of my attachment to the work I have done. There is deep satisfaction in both the creative time and the release from it; there is balance.

I recently listened to a segment of The Moth in which a New York Times reporter ventured to Afghanistan after the ouster of the Taliban in 2001. He went in search of art. All forms of art had been banned while the Taliban ruled, everything from painting to poetry and music. For five years no one was allowed to produce art, to sing, to act, or even own a musical instrument; to do so would have meant arrest or even death.

By a series of synchronistic events the reporter met a man who was painting miniatures in the traditional style. He asked him why he wasn’t painting something new, expressing the energy of now and the future that was looming before him and his people. The artist told the reporter that he could not paint the future until he had completed the past, that his people were not free to move forward if they did not fully know their past. It struck me. The artist knew the value of recapitulation; only in fully knowing where he had been could he go forward with any sense of release or contentment. He knew he had to recreate what had been, as perfectly as possible, but he also knew that a time would arrive when he would leave the past and move on.

I have recently been pondering my own process of creativity. I notice how that need for perfection is so honed that it takes over. I become totally focused on what I am doing and often the rest of my life goes unattended. I do the minimum, but only what absolutely needs doing. I am often reluctant to stop at the end of the day, to have anything interfere. There have been times in my life when I was able to totally live the creative life, but as much as I loved it I now know that it was a life out of balance.

Needling thoughts that I must attend to the piles of clutter, to the unattended that gets forgotten after a while, had been stirring all through the winter months. I’d look around and tell myself that I had to attend to this pile of stuff and that pile of stuff. When I’m done with this, I’d say, when I’m done with that. Now it’s almost summer. I’ve been making inroads into clearing the clutter, into clearing also the energy stuck in that clutter, making a concerted effort to get rid of what I no longer use or need and to organize that which has value so that my life can flow better. My need for perfection is seeping out of the dedicated creative time into all the time now. Life, I have decided, is my new art form.

I still seek a certain kind of perfection, not to be perfect because I know I am not, but to achieve the impeccability that I have mostly assigned to my creative endeavors. Where before I might leave dishes in the sink to do later while I head off to do something creative, I now finish the kitchen clean-up before I turn to something else. I do it with impeccability. I want to walk into a beautiful kitchen later in the day, to feel good in my home, to experience a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that is energetically fulfilling. In so doing I learn the value of completion of one task before beginning a new one. This is what the Afghani artist was telling the reporter; one must fully complete if one is to be fully energetically available for new creative endeavors.

I saw this heart shape in the floor tiles, an almost birdlike and beelike form flying past like freed energy... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
I saw this heart shape in the floor tiles, an almost birdlike and beelike form flying past like freed energy…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

I’ve noticed that even in clearing out my cluttered closet I achieve a sense of renewal. The more I clear, the more space I create, space in which energy can finally flow freely and naturally without obstacles or blockages.

In clearing, I create a new reality for myself, more balanced and in alignment with the energy of the universe. Each time I clear something I feel myself become more energetically alive and available for what life has in store.

Try it; it really works,
Jan

The story I heard on The Moth: A Time of Hope

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: A Contemplative Life

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Seeking solitude in the midst of life... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Seeking solitude in the midst of life…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

I had dreams when I was young. Those dreams always centered around a contemplative life. My Catholic schoolgirl self envisioned joining a convent, one that fostered a life of silence and prayer. I thought that would be the perfect life.

In my teenage years I contemplated the hermit’s life, living alone in some remote area, far removed from society in search of nirvana. As I grew up, left home and went out into the world, I still wished for and dreamed of retreat, for the safety and freedom of a solitary place where I could just be.

At my core I was always aware that I had such dreams because I was afraid of the world, but little did I know the reason for my fears. I did not know that I had already encountered frightening evil.

Over the past few nights, while dreaming, I have encountered a woman. She confronts me. The first night she sat next to me. She stared at my hands and arms, which I held in my lap. “Why aren’t you wearing any of Jeanne’s jewelry? Why aren’t you wearing anything that belonged to her?” she asked me. “It doesn’t matter,” I said in my usual humble and self-deprecating manner. “I’m not special, and besides anyone can do what I do.”

Last night she came back into my dream. This time I passed by her on a street. “Bitch!” she said to me as she walked quickly past. Behind me I could hear another woman ask her why she had said that to me. “We have to harass her,” she said.

These two dreams make sense to me as I seek balance in my life, as I constantly seek to fully accept and own who I am, all parts of myself. In the first dream the woman was confronting me about my spiritual side and my work as a spiritual being. Am I truly owning her? Do I fully live as the spiritual being I have worked so hard to become, a being with the ability to channel?

In the second dream, the woman is asking me to confront my human self, all the things I have done in this life, all the moods, angers, deceits, and fears that make me human. I must fully embrace and own her too. The woman in my dream asks me to fully express all parts of myself, without holding back, to fully be both the spiritual being that I am and the visceral human, bitch or otherwise, that I am.

The two sides of self must fully live as one... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
The two sides of self must fully live as one…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

And I do need to be harassed. If I am to know who I truly am, I must constantly be confronted, in dreams and in reality. All of this is part of actively living a contemplative life. I already know that if I go too far over to the contemplative side I ignore my human self. If I get too human I ignore my spiritual self. But what I realize, and have for a long time now, is that my dreams of living a contemplative life have always been my reality. I have always been a contemplative person. Most of us are.

I did not go into a convent or retreat to a mountaintop, but I did create my own reality. I did secure myself a life of contemplation in all that I chose to do in life. I was always living my dream. But when we are in the midst of life we might not realize this, though I see how my intentions—what I told myself I wanted—became my life. I lived the solitary life of a freelance artist and writer, not in a convent or a cave on the side of a mountain but sequestered in my studio. I ventured out into the world to deliver one assignment and secure my next, but for the most part I lived in solitude. And I liked it that way.

I also now know that my contemplative life has evolved me forward into something more like my childhood dreams, into a life full of opportunities to experience the purity and freedom to just be; what was always at the root of my desire for retreat. But I had to go through the trials of recapitulation to get here, like the confrontations with the dark side of the soul that all contemplatives must face if they are to evolve into the spiritual beings they dream of becoming too.

At this point in my life, as I look back on the journey I’ve taken, I see the bigger picture now, but we have the opportunity to do this all the time, to pause and contemplate where we have been. We always have the opportunity to ask: What are the messages I’m giving myself? What reality do I want to create for myself? What dreams have I been dreaming my whole life? Am I fulfilling them? Are they truly my dreams, coming wholly from within? Or am I trying to fulfill the dreams or uphold the demands of another? Am I living the life I really want to live? The answers to such questions may be surprising!

I see very clearly that my childhood dreams of the contemplative life came solely from within. They were indicating the way to both my salvation and my darkness, or rather that through contemplating my darkness I would achieve the salvation I had really been dreaming about all along. I was not fully conscious of this when I was young, but when I think about it now I realize there was no other choice for me, and so I have to say that at some level of consciousness I really was aware that I was totally on the right path, solitary though it was.

Sometimes we must stop and contemplate where we are. We might see that our life is full of both light and dark...and both are right. - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Sometimes we must stop and contemplate where we are.
We might see that our life is full of both light and dark…and both are right.
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

My spiritual self wishes to tell you that you too will get to a place of freedom and purity, but my human self needs you to know that it may be a tough road—if life harasses you, that’s good! But both sides of myself would also say that if you look at where you are right now, and contemplate how you got here and what your dreams are, perhaps you will find that you are right where you always wanted to be. You might be taking your own path of heart, living a life that is directed solely from within.

Had I been given the insight that I now have when I was in my twenties, would it have mattered? Yes, I think it would have. And in truth I was being given advice and insight every day of my life, as we all are, by the world outside of me and by my deepest conflicts within. It’s just how life is, whether we are contemplating it or not.

Sending love as you take life one day at a time, trusting that you are on your path of heart,
Jan