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.
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
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.
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’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.
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
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
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
Every morning the sheep leave the barn… they head out into the field. Is that fulfilling enough? – Photo by Jan Ketchel
If we are to live as conscious, alert beings we must find out who we truly are. If we are to get ourselves out of our stuck places, we must discover how we got stuck to begin with. If we are to be energetically aware and alive, we must free ourselves from old energy that has attached to us and constantly drains our energy.
We might not even know that our energy is being drained, or that we are not fully consciously present and aware until someone points it out to us. We might not know that we are energetically depleted either until we fail or fall down, with absolutely no energy left to go on. Often our ego rushes in to defend us, as we point out to the Truthsayer how perfect we really are, how on top of everything and in control we feel, how we know ourselves better than they do and how impertinent they are to point out to us something that just isn’t so!
It isn’t easy to face what lies at our deepest core and directs our lives, old defenses and personality traits from childhood perhaps that still rule. When we feel stuck, it’s pretty certain that one of those old powerful allies will rear it’s head, asking us to call it forth again, to save us from having to be challenged. Far better to stay the same, it says, safer then. But we are adults now. We’ve all grown up and had to do adult things and so we must fully embrace our adult selves if we are to face our old childhood allies.
In addition, once we realize that we are here to evolve on our spiritual journey, to finally awaken and release ourselves from the cyclical suffering of life on this earth—from samsara as the Buddhists call it—we are going to be challenged to break out of and through our old patterns and behaviors. Once we begin the journey of awareness those challenges will come consistently and unrelentingly, often at the most inopportune of times. Our adult self must stay fully present in the face of those old allies, tell them that the gig is up, that we are leaving them behind, intending to move on now. But how do we do that without suffering even more?
We all land somewhere, but where we go from there is up to us… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Well, it’s a step-by-step process, a one-day-at-a-time kind of thing. It’s painful; no doubt about it. But as we string together those individual days they begin to link into a growing span, a little more golden each day. Over time we begin to see positive change in our attitudes and we notice that we make different choices. Our childhood allies don’t pop up so often and our adult self is more flowing and eager for life. We begin to experience ourselves as changing beings. Eventually a whole new lifestyle develops. Suddenly, one day we realize that we have actually changed a lot! We are no longer the being we once were.
In taking our small steps each day, we are choosing to take a new path, and that alone is good work! We can choose to take that first step right now, or we may decide to wait for the next lifetime. We may even decide that we haven’t fully achieved our highest potential yet. We may desire to come back to fulfill it in our next life.
I once met a woman who discovered a new part of herself late in life. She had healed herself on many deep levels, in the process discovering so many alternative and energetic healing modalities that she had never previously been exposed to. She fully embraced herself as a reincarnated being and knew that she should strive to evolve beyond this realm, yet she had finally discovered something that fit her like a glove. She realized her greatest potential as a human being was as of yet unfulfilled. She decided that she wanted to live another life, and so she fully intended to return as an energetic healer, to help others find their energetic connection too.
She was 84 when I met her more than a decade ago, with a brightness in her eyes and a glowing spirit that could not wait to come back. She declared this with such unbending intent. I lost touch with her, but I hope she fulfills that intent. It felt right when she stated it, and it still feels right. It’s the kind of healing energy the world needs more of!
In the meantime, we all have choices to make. Are we ready to become as aware as that woman became. Are we ready to fully explore our own greatest potential, to declare that we are unfulfilled, or actually quite fulfilled? Are we ready to accept our appointment with what comes next with such unbending intent? Is this lifetime enough; will it be our final one? To find out we must face our deepest truths—that which keeps us stuck—and take back our energy.
The fearless little ant… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
It takes gumption and a good amount of fearlessness, but we all have those qualities inside us. We just have to embrace them, one step and one day at a time. In clearly differentiating between and separating our childhood allies from our adult self, we take the first step on our journey to wholeness and fulfillment.
Always taking that next step forward, wondering where it will lead me today,
Jan
Seeking beauty in calm surroundings… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
I notice how everything aligns, what I’m thinking about, what happens outside in the world, as well as what happens on a deeper subconscious level. The universes are synchronized.
I’m concerned with energetic and spatial alignment and compatibility. I want things in my life to be in good relationship, to each other and to me, as I live and flow through my life. I want to personally be in good alignment with my environment too, both inside and outside the house I live in, as well as inside and outside my physical body house.
While I seek calmness and balance, I must also challenge myself to go beyond my comfort zone, to be appropriately daring but also to not be foolhardy. There are times when we must push ourselves to try something new, but there are other times when it might not be the right time yet. And so patience is part of the process; it may actually be critical that we know when to be daring and when to wait. And so, we must be willing to question our decisions on a deeper level. Am I holding back for the right reason or am I acquiescing to the old self who just doesn’t want to be disturbed? I’ve noticed that the appropriate answer comes when the right question is asked.
My greater intent is to remain in alignment and in the natural flow of things, whether that flow is calm and sedate or frenzied and difficult. I seek to be adjustable in appropriate ways, giving and receiving when right, but also able to pull back and away when that feels right. Sometimes it just isn’t right to be available, no matter how a decision to not engage may appear to others. Sometimes it’s just time to break the old patterns, expectations, and demands of others, and withdraw. Sometimes it’s even time to permanently sever old ties that no longer serve us.
I’m a dreamer. If you’ve read any of my books, especially the latest one, Into the Vast Nothingness, you’ll have encountered my dreaming self. As I recapitulated I became very adept at analyzing my dreams. As I learned more about my own life and began to understand the symbols that arose to show me the way forward, things in my life evened out. I began to access the calmness and balance I had always sought to maintain. Now, at this point in my life, I’ve achieved more calmness and balance than I ever thought possible. During my recapitulation, I’d momentarily access it but it would be fleeting, as I’d dive back into my process or be drawn back in, as was appropriate at the time. Eventually the process took less of my energy and life took more—real life, new life freed of trauma—as life in alignment with my new self took over.
Lately my dreaming self has been going to classes. The other night I earned my doctorate and graduated into a “day of renewal.” The next night I dreamed that I was back in school again, sitting at the feet of an Indian guru, studying the Upanishads. That same night I also studied intent, holding onto my intent to “see” as the Shamans of Ancient Mexico say, seeing energy as it moves in the universe.
You don’t belong here! You can’t come in! – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Last night my intent for calmness and balance came through, right in alignment with my greater intent to be in the natural flow of things. I sat in the middle of a solid square comprised of 25 one-foot-square stones, laid out like a patio. This square was my place of power, my fortress but also my place of calm mediation and retreat. Though there were no walls surrounding me, I was totally encased inside this square; nothing could reach me that I did not bring into it. The number 25 was significant. Upon awakening I wondered why 25, but when I drew out the pattern I noted that the 25th stone sat solidly in the center of the perfect square. It was the center of my place of power.
As I dreamed, worry arose again and again. I knew that worry was not necessary, that it signifies something from the past that is done and cannot be undone, or something from the future that has not happened yet and so it was futile and a waste of energy to allow it to have my energy. It was appropriate to withdraw. And so each time worry arose in my dream, I retreated into my square. I sat down on the central 25th stone and grew immediately calm, knowing for certain that it was the right thing to do.
Upon awakening and beginning my day, I carry that sense of calmness with me. It is solid like stone. My fortress is both a spiritual container for my deeper self and protection against all that is outside that wants to get in, the dual aspect of containment that is necessary if we are to achieve and maintain alignment and balance in our lives. In going inside my stone square, sitting at the center of my power mandala, I declare that I am not available right now because my own energy needs rejuvenation and exploration, completely devoid of outside energy.
As we seek to know ourselves on deeper levels, we must learn how to contain our energy for our own use, constantly adjusting so that we can also be available, when appropriate, to share ourselves with others. We all need a center of power to return to as we go about our day.
It is certainly appropriate, and even necessary, to establish a place of retreat, a place where we feel safe and secure, away from the demands of the world and the cogitations of the mind—such as the worry of my dream—but also a place where we can spiritually rejuvenate. This place can be an imaginary fortress like a square or a circle, or it can be a quiet spot inside or outside, removed from everyone and everything. It might even mean sitting in our car for a few moments of breathing before entering back into the fray of life. In offering ourselves even momentary retreat we set the intent to not overextend ourselves or lose ourselves to the outer world, but to give our spirit appropriate time alone.
Like stone, my fortress is solid! – Photo by Jan Ketchel
As we give ourselves permission to retreat we also give ourselves permission to reenergize and maintain our power to live life on our own terms. It’s something I worked hard for, as many of you do too, and it’s not something I will very easily give up. So I gladly accept the advice of my dreaming self, taking time for spiritual study, retreat and renewal!
