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: Snakes Alive!

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Sometimes we wake up to a different world... not by choice, but by the power of nature... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Sometimes we wake up to a different world…
not by choice, but by the power of nature…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

During my recapitulation there came a point in the process where I literally felt like I was shedding my old self and transforming into a new self. My body did not feel right. I didn’t fit into it anymore, even my clothes didn’t fit, and nothing about what was going on inside me fit either. Simultaneously, I began having dreams about snakes. Upon awakening from a snake dream I was immediately fearful. Snakes, after all, scared me. I noticed, however, that my dreaming self wasn’t afraid of the snakes, in fact she was quite calm in their presence.

I began to experience these snake dreams as supportive of my recapitulation, as part of the natural flow of my transformative process. I began to see snakes as offering healing venom and healing energy, rather than signifying something negative. I began to see them as giving back to me what I had lost, my own energy. Snakes became an integral part of my process as I shed the old self and became a new self, as I went through a viscerally real death and rebirth.

I pulled the Death card from the Tarot deck this week. It always appears so ominous, so negative, until I remember that it signifies this same process of transformation, as I shed the old self—old ideas, old habits and behaviors—and more fully embrace my greater potential. Life is full of transformational moments. Here I am thirteen years after beginning my recapitulation, still shedding the old self, even the self who evolved out of my three-year-long recapitulation process has been shed, as over and over again, I face myself and what life presents me with. In fact, the Death card, number 13 in the major arcana, is my growth symbol this year, so I know I must pay extra attention to this card overall. Each time it appears, it reminds me that I am changing all the time, and that there is nothing to be afraid of.

The thought that I am transforming all the time permeates my existence. We are, after all, nature, and nature constantly changes, in very obvious ways. One day the weather is calm and sunny. The next day we are buried under two feet of snow! Overnight things change. One day we are calm; the next day we might be agitated or moody. This is nature inside us, as we flow from day to day, just the way Mother Nature does, just as the stars and planets constantly move, align and realign, just as the oceans rise and ebb.

According to Angeles Arrien in her Tarot Handbook, the Death/Rebirth card symbolizes “the universal principle of detachment and release. It is through letting go that we are able to give birth to new forms… The snake reminds us that in order to transform, we must let go of old identities in order to be able to express new ones, much like the snake that sheds its skin…”

In Animal Speak, Ted Andrews presents a myriad of snake symbolism, but basically he too says that the snake is a symbol of alchemy—transformation—and healing. “Before the snake sheds its skin,” he writes, “its eyes begin to cloud over, as if to indicate it is entering into a stage between life and death.” I know this stage very well too, because during the time of my recapitulation my eyes repeatedly clouded over, in fact, they stayed cloudy for days as I remained in a dreamy in-between world, not quite the old self, yet not quite the new self either. I floundered between worlds, seeking to gain clarity on what had happened to me in childhood, while also seeking to gain clarity on who my future, authentic self might possibly be. It was a crucial time in the process.

It's all about transforming and expanding consciousness... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
It’s all about transforming and expanding consciousness…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Everyone who recapitulates goes through this same shedding and until the shedding of the old is done true clarity will not reign. But once the old skin has shed, the eyes clear and new life really begins as one enters a world that was previously blocked from view. As fear sheds with the old self a new self emerges into a world that, all of a sudden, is different. It’s not, however, the world that’s really different, it’s our perception of the world that’s changed. Our consciousness has expanded.

As I entered my own world of expanded consciousness, my vision literally changed. The blurry vision I’d experienced during my recapitulation did clear; my nearsightedness practically disappeared too. Now I see more clearly than I ever have in my entire life. And what was once so clear to me, the details of my past self—what I peered at so closely during my recapitulation—are no longer as clear; they don’t need to be. In fact, my vision has totally shifted from nearsightedness to farsightedness. My eyes are free to turn outward now and receive the world with new clarity. My snake dreams pointed all of this out to me so long ago, letting me know that one day I would navigate life without my old fears inhabiting and inhibiting me.

Snakes and death are healing and transformational aspects of nature. I see the old people in my life losing their visual clarity, and I know they are in transition, soon to be reborn. In the throes of recapitulation, as in the throes of death, there is the certainty of new life. Every day, we too have the opportunity to be reborn simply by the decisions we make and in how we choose to see and perceive the world around us.

We are all free to change, but it requires giving energy to questioning who we really have the potential to become and trusting that we will eventually receive the answer. It’s our choice to decide to commit to deeper work on the self. Are we ready to make this lifetime a meaningfully transitional lifetime? Are we ready to finally do it? Are we ready to face our fears and suffer through the shedding of who we are to become our true authentic self?

In the throes of death and rebirth we are offered opportunities to transform and expand our consciousness and enter new life!

Using snake medicine all the time,
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Thank You Shirley Temple—You Saved My Life

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We're all just passing through... What do we offer? - Photo of our resident deer taking a peek inside by Jan Ketchel
We’re all just passing through… What do we offer?
– Photo of our resident deer taking a peek inside by Jan Ketchel

I grew up in an emotionless household. I write about this extensively in my books, as I faced the truths of my family of origin as well as the truths of my long-repressed childhood sexual abuse. And when I say emotionless, I really mean that.

Emotions were forbidden. Neither crying nor elation, and everything in between, was staunched. Evenness of temper, implying that nothing was ever wrong within the family unit, was critical. Imperfections, if present, were denied and suppressed as appearance was everything. Underneath the facade of perfection, however, the emotions of seven children and their parents bubbled and frothed, seeking outlet. It’s no wonder that all my siblings and I went into creative careers, as writers, musicians, artisans and fine builders. Within all of us, emotion sought release in some form of creativity.

When I was a child, at seven o’clock on Sunday nights Walt Disney presented an hour long television show. Simultaneously, WOR—channel 9 out of New York City—aired the movies of Shirley Temple. My five brothers and I fought over which show we’d watch. They usually won. They’d sit by the new TV upstairs watching the Disney show while I went downstairs into the basement to turn on the old television. I’d fiddle with the rabbit ears until grainy reception came through. The snowy picture would suddenly cut out with loud static and I’d have to get up repeatedly to readjust the antenna. I didn’t give up. It was my private time away from everyone. Sometimes my little sister, seven years younger, would sit with me, though mostly I remember being in the dark basement alone, staring into the eye of the old TV set, weeping.

You see, Shirley Temple let me cry. She never asked me to hold back my emotions. She let me be ecstatically happy and deeply sad too. She let me live beside her, feeling her emotions. In every pouty mouth and every delightful glint in her eye, I was allowed to live from a place that normally I had to keep shut down. And so, I thank Shirley Temple Black, who died this week, for offering me that emotional outlet, for all the movies she made and all the moments of release that my child self received from her child self.

She was making those movies in the thirties and forties, years before I was born, but they carried forth into the fifties and sixties all that I needed in order to connect with my deeply emotional self, a natural self that found little outlet otherwise.

Thank you, Shirley Temple, you saved my emotional life,
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Pathways to Change

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This deer has constantly challenged itself to come closer and closer, coming by several times a day to raid the bird seed! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
This deer has constantly challenged itself
to come closer and closer,
coming by several times a day to raid the bird seed!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Living a healthy life, for as long as we are here, is all about care of the self, striving to know the self at the deepest level, learning to love and to receive, giving the inner self and the outer self equal attention and importance. It’s about valuing who we are and what we have to offer, because we all have something to offer. It’s about fully embracing the real self—the true self that we all know we are but are often afraid to express—allowing it live to the fullest.

This is not an easy task! We must struggle to maintain balance, both internally and externally, while we simultaneously must wrestle with our human desires and appetites. If we are to succeed, we must pay attention to our bodies, our minds, and our spirits, as well as all the parts of ourselves that constantly vie for our attention. We must learn to be okay with where we are. We must remain fully aware that life itself wishes us to grow and change. We must be okay with what comes to us from outside, knowing that it is there to guide and teach us. I see both negative and positive aspects of life as obstacles because whether they are harsh or difficult challenges and confrontations, diseases and physical impediments, or even if everything comes easily to us, they all challenge us to individuate and mature so that we may reach our fullest potential.

If we can begin to accept that life is more than just a mundane, sad, unfulfilled existence; if we can embrace it as an exciting experience in a most fantastic realm, we open ourselves to something far beyond the norm. In simply deciding that the life we are in is enough, in acknowledging that what we must contend with everyday is our necessary pathway to change, we begin to experience life in a new way.

I create my own reality, and so, if I constantly complain about my life then I will never experience life in a new way. I will only experience what I say and tell myself. But if I shake off the negative speak that runs through me and contaminates my experience, I offer myself the possibility for a new experience. This is what Jeanne speaks of in her messages. Each week she asks us to be open and willing to face life in a new way, not viewing it as a horrible or frightening experience, nor as a tiresome task or depressing situation, but as an exciting adventure. She asks us to be energetically available to life in a new way.

Living a healthy life, and gaining awareness of who we are and where we are really being led in our personal lives, entails constantly seeking balance, paying attention to what our bodies tell us, honing our skills of self-communication and dialogue with the inner self—all parts of that inner self. A good way to begin intending and asserting a new attitude toward life, is to pay attention to our physical bodies. In simply paying attention to our body’s messages, we might just have the first big breakthrough to new life.

Recently, I have been struggling with a lower back ache. It’s due to heavy lifting of 40 pound bags of pellets and the hauling of firewood. I have had to pay attention to it, as it will not let me do otherwise. It’s forcing me to stay in my body. I already know that this is one of my greatest challenges in this lifetime, to be present in my physical body. Through my entire recapitulation, being present in my body meant facing the pain and humiliation of the sexual abuse I suffered as a child. As a child I got really good at leaving my body—it was a means of escape from the pain it carried—so good that for most of my life I was never really in it. My recapitulation taught me that my body was a good place, my vehicle through life, absolutely necessary if I was to evolve. And so I struggle constantly to remain present, to not drift off as I am naturally wont to do.

We honor our guidance from the universe... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
We honor our guidance from the universe…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

To change a habit that once saved my life has been challenging. And so, I am thankful for the aches and pains of my lower spine, reminding me every day to pay attention to what my body is telling me. I am addressing it constantly in a multitude of healing practices, but my biggest healing has been to let it be present, to work with it, to let it guide me to what I should and should not be doing at this time in my life.

I have always been physically strong, able to do exactly what I wanted, and so I never limited myself in anyway. Now, I must face that I am limited and sometimes, I must admit, it has been a real pain—pun intended! I can’t just do anymore; now I have to think before I do, and that is both a challenge and a contemplative process. I must stay in my body basically all the time, in every moment of the day. If I do not, it reminds me —OUCH!— to come back! And so, I am constantly present, paying attention to what I am doing in each moment. Life has become a constant walking/sitting meditation. I am paying attention to the fact that my back, always so strong and readily available, is now saying: Don’t take on so much for others; don’t give away your energy so easily, protect it, use it for what is most important. You are not allowed to bear so much anymore. You are important—take care of you!

Each morning, Chuck and I begin the day by each pulling a card from our favorite Tarot deck. It’s a way of anchoring ourselves in our intent—the intent to remain balanced, aware, and open to life. Each day we ask the cards to supply us with what we need most to guide us. The answer, whatever it is, always reminds us to pay attention to our internal worlds as well as our external worlds, as they mirror each other perfectly. Each day we both pick the perfect response to where we are individually, and as a loving, growing partnership as well. How could it be otherwise? The universe is always in alignment with us! The challenge is for us to get in alignment with it!

My little back ache is asking me to pull back from too much experience in the outer world, to hone my skills in my inner world in a new way. And so I have been daring myself—as you know, if you’ve been listening to my weekly channeled messages—to deepen my experience as an energetic being. Yes, I must live life fully in my body, accept my strong physical self, but equally my strong spiritual self as well. And that is why I have a backache!

I see this as part of my process of growth and change, in alignment with my spirit’s intent to constantly grow. I don’t believe we are here to just grow once and then plunk down and say, “Okay, I did it, I changed.” No, the challenge is to keep growing. Likewise, if all I do is moan about my aching back, nothing will shift for me at all, all I’ll have is a painful back and a depressing life. But, if I elect to use this challenge, then I am doing something to shift myself, to change my perception of life, and hone my awareness. In fact, I create a new reality for myself.

Watch those backs! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Watch those backs!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

I hope you all find out what your little or big aches, pains and challenges are trying to alert you to. Mostly, they ask us to confront something, to get to the bottom of who we are, to make amends, and move on to the next challenge. We just have to be ready to face and accept the truth of that challenge, and act upon it in a positive, healing way. Acting upon it is often the greatest challenge. Many times I have had to feel the searing pain in my lower back to remind me of just how I am being asked to act upon the messages I receive.

Good luck! And be careful out there if you are shoveling all that snow today!
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: A Brush With Vibrancy

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In honor of one of the greatest troubadours... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
In honor of one of the greatest troubadours…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

I grew up not far from Beacon, New York, the home of Pete Seeger. My dad would point out a certain road leading up the mountainside whenever we passed it. “That’s where Pete Seeger lives,” he’d say. I knew who Pete Seeger was. Somehow, I’d always known. I knew he was an activist and a pacifist, but most of all a musician.

When I got my first job at 16, working as a chambermaid, as they called it back then, at the newly constructed Holiday Inn in Fishkill, Pete Seeger was often a topic of conversation among the maids there, most of whom were from Beacon. He seemed to stir ire, and there were many times when I could not grasp how one person could stir such anger in others, nor how people could hate so vehemently someone they had never met. “But he’s a good person, he just wants fairness for all,” I’d say, in my attempts to convince the opposing side. It was my first exposure to virulent hatred for someone who was different, who saw the world in a different way and was not afraid to speak out about it. He thought for himself and acted on it and that, I knew, was good.

Beacon was also where the dentist was, Alp’s Sweet Shop, and Schoonmaker’s Department Store. There was a ferry that took you over to Newburgh on the other side of the Hudson River, which I believe has once again resumed service. We’d ride that ferry pretty often, summer and winter. My dad would take us across, just for an outing. In the winter, we’d huddle outside against the bitter wind watching the hull break through the ice, heading to the Western bank of the river to shop at a big department store I can’t remember the name of; we’d get our shoes there.

Beacon was the home of Matteawan. At the time I was growing up it was a prison for the criminally insane. We could hear the honking siren from our house 15 or so miles away, screaming out a warning of escape. It was a time to lock your doors and windows until you heard the siren again, letting you know they’d found the escapee. Beacon had been a bustling, prosperous city of hat factories, but by the 1950s it was pretty run down, a place known for its rough side, the kids at the high school notoriously unruly. Beacon was where the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Inc., founded by Pete and Toshi Seeger, had its home and the boat would often dock there. It’s where you caught the train to go into New York City and beyond. The station is right alongside the river, overlooking a small park and the murky Hudson River.

I was standing on the crowded train platform one day, in my early twenties, heading back into the city. It was a hot summer day. A damp and smelly tunnel led under the tracks. A young woman came and stood next to me. She waved back to a small group of people standing across the parking lot, next to where the Clearwater was docked. A car drove up and a man got out. He quickly walked over to the tunnel that led to the train platform. Suddenly he was standing next to me too, a tall and lanky man with thinning hair, a big glowing smile on his face. He’d gotten there just in time to say goodbye to, I assumed, his daughter. It was Pete Seeger.

I couldn’t help but listen to their conversation. He was so loving, a concerned parent. Did she have everything, enough money, food? “Call us when you get there,” he said, the words kind of jumping out of him. The conversation was of mundane topics but the energy that the two of them exuded was anything but mundane. They vibrated! They looked directly into each other’s eyes and I felt how much they loved each other, how intensely they knew and understood each other at the deepest level, how close a family they were.

Vibrant energy is inside us all, just waiting to leap out! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Vibrant energy is inside us all,
just waiting to leap out!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The energy between the two of them vibrated so palpably that it flowed right out and filled the air around them. Standing so close I could not but feel it too. I suddenly understood what being alive meant, what loving another being felt like, what being focused and committed meant. I understood how Pete Seeger could captivate an audience and lead a march. His energy leapt out of him much like his words did and it was almost overwhelming.

I perceived Pete and his daughter as joyous people, so happy and full of life. I felt how unafraid they were to be themselves. It was invigorating and inspiring just standing in their presence, feeling their vibrancy, and yet at the same time I felt my own fears, how they controlled and ruled me. I felt how I wanted to be like them, full of so much life that I vibrated in the same fearless manner.

The train pulled into the station and we got on. Pete stood on the platform waving to his daughter as the train pulled out. I felt like he was waving to me too, like he was really waving to all of us, and so I lifted my hand and waved back. He stood there smiling big, his face aglow with the vibrancy of a spirit that had so much to give. A humble man in worn jeans and an old short-sleeved plaid shirt, no one special, just Pete Seeger.

This memory came to me as I thought about Pete Seeger when I heard of his death the other day, and in honor of his passing, I pass it along. That day on the train platform something stirred deeply within, something that would take me years to fully release. And yet, here I am feeling quite alive and glowing myself, having dared myself to think differently and act differently, to confront those fears that at one time kept me so frightened and closed, so quiet and unable to speak or act on my own behalf. It was my personal journey of healing that awakened my own energetic vibrancy, vibrancy that we all have within us.

Thank you, Pete Seeger, for 94 years of sharing your energy! It was nice to brush up against your vibrancy,
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Beginning

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Angry! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Angry!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

A man was angry all the time. He drank every night to numb his anger. He wanted to change so he decided to meditate. His intent set, he got up early in the morning, took a shower and sat at his desk. Before long his consciousness left his body, taking him out of his apartment and the city he lived in. It withdrew further and further from the earth. Soon he was in outer space looking down at the world, seeing it in its entirety as his awareness expanded and expanded. He entered infinity and experienced the endlessness of it and the knowledge that he was part of it all, that all life was energetically connected and infinite. When he returned to his body he was a changed man, his perception of life and the world transformed forever. Even so, he knew that in order to hold onto what he had learned, to keep experiencing himself as infinite, he had to shed his anger. Even though he had experienced the light, he knew he still had to face the darkness within.

Not everyone has such an experience when they sit down to meditate for the very first time, but many meditators eventually have this same kind of experience, the experience of the self as energy, interconnected to and a part of all energy. During such experiences the issues of the self pale in comparison to the ecstatic experience. If we are to truly evolve, however, the angry man was right; we must face our darkness.

Last night I dreamed. I was traveling on a train beside the ocean. There was a voice speaking throughout the dream, instructing, chanting a calming mantra, saying that meditation must happen all the time. From the train window I could see a small island with a Greek style temple on it not too far from the coast. I could see that it was possible to get there and I desired to go, but each time I saw the temple the ocean was churning up gigantic waves, fierce and threatening. Many times throughout the night I rode this train. The scenario was always the same. I’d hear the voiceover, see the temple and wish to be on it, notice the dark and threatening waves impossible to traverse. I’d get off the train and enter a large hotel where a gathering was taking place. A lot of people were there, walking around, keeping their energy to themselves, not talking or interacting. Everyone was meditating where they were. I did the same. Outside the vast windows of the hotel I could see the churning ocean and the temple on the island. The voiceover still said the same thing, “Meditate all the time.”

When I woke up, I knew that the message in the dream was that in order to get to the temple we must endure the struggles that we are faced with, the darkness within—the churning ocean. Just like the angry man who wished to change, deep inner work is necessary in order to attain and maintain the transcendent experience—the temple.

During my recapitulation this was exactly what I learned. In spite of the most amazing experiences that literally cracked through reality and presented me with the most stunning view of my life and the world, I knew I still had to face my deepest secrets and challenges if I was to have full access to my energetic self and be able to actually live as the changed being I was working so hard to become. Having a deep and meaningful spiritual practice was as important as doing my recapitulation and, in fact, became the perfect companion to the shamanic work I was doing. It was essential to the entire process.

I am eating… I am only eating… - Photo by Jan Ketchel
I am eating… I am only eating…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The true work of recapitulation is reconciliation with the fragments of self, healing the wounds of life, and even lifetimes, so that the true self, the spirit, may finally take its rightful place as the true self in the world. The goal of my recapitulation was to find the means to live from my deeply spiritual self all the time. I could only do that by giving that spiritual self a practice that was as deeply meaningful as the recapitulation. And so, my lifelong practices of yoga and meditation deepened as a result, becoming the prefect companions to my shamanic work.

I encourage everyone to develop a spiritual practice. If you desire to fully experience and embrace your spiritual self, to live as a changed being, from that place of deepest truth, then a spiritual practice is imperative. A spiritual practice will accompany you through life, bringing you constantly back to experiences of yourself as an energetic being, bringing fulfillment of our deepest interconnectedness. (In fact, if everyone was doing a deep spiritual practice all the time our world would surely change, but that’s another blog!) Meditation, as instructed in my dream, can be done all the time. It’s simple and everyone can do it. It doesn’t take equipment or a gym pass. It only takes mindfulness.

For instance, right now I am sitting and writing this blog, but I am also meditating. I am writing; I am only writing. I am mindfully focused only on writing and honing the message of this blog. When I get up, I will focus on getting up. Perhaps I will say: “I am getting up now. I am walking away from my computer. I am breathing. I am walking.”

These are mindful messages to the self that cancel out the constant thoughts that circulate and defeat us. At the same time that I am doing this mindful thought-erasing activity, I am also mindful that at another time I will examine those other thoughts. I will find out where they come from, how they came into my head, who said them to me, and why I still carry them. I will face what is dark and disturbing within myself, mindfully, just as I mindfully remain present in my daily life, focusing on everything I do throughout the day. To have peace of mind, I must constantly and mindfully work on myself. But to remain a balanced and present being, sometimes it’s appropriate to have a calm mind, and at other times it’s appropriate to pay attention to the mind and confront our issues and thoughts. As our mindfulness practice grows we become better able to manage our minds and maturely handle what comes to challenge us.

I am drinking tea… I am only drinking tea… - Photo by Jan Ketchel
I am drinking tea…
I am only drinking tea…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

A practice of mindful meditation is the perfect way to gain balance. To periodically shift our thoughts away from negativity, we simply state what we are doing, over and over again. As the voice in my dream said to me during the night: we can meditate all the time. We might say: I am sitting at my desk working now. I am eating now. I am reading now. I am driving now. I am walking now. I put my foot down, I breathe and I walk, one step at a time, mindfully. I am walking.

A mindfulness practice offers the opportunity to gain balance and calmness even in the midst of turmoil. If we do it often enough, we eventually do it without even thinking. We can turn off bad thoughts by introducing mindful thoughts.

I am good. I am writing. I am breathing. I am love. I am sending you love.

In mindfulness,
Jan