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: There Are No Obstacles

Leave a comment
Sometimes a brick wall is just a brick wall... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Sometimes a brick wall is just a brick wall…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Everything had been flowing along nicely. Everything I’d set my intent to and planned for had gone swimmingly. And then, all of a sudden it seemed, things ground to a halt, the flow dried up. Obstacles appeared.

Last night, I dreamt all night of driving racecars on a track. Sometimes I was inside the racecar, zooming around the track, the obstacle course. At other times I was playing with toy racecars on a toy racetrack. But the scenario was always the same. At some point along the way, I’d come to a big hill that I just could not get up. “Oh,” I’d say, “I’m not supposed to go this way.” And I’d turn around and go a different way.

By the end of my night of dreaming, I understood that if we are living in alignment with nature, in the Tao, there are no true obstacles; everything is there for a reason.

Some obstacles, it becomes abundantly clear, are impossible to overcome. We might be driving along the road to find it blocked by a fallen tree. Of course we could sit there and steam about it, but it’s pretty obvious that we won’t get through. It’s clear that we have to turn around and go a different way.

At other times, obstacles arise that are less clearly interpreted as obstacles. We might be trying to reach someone. They don’t answer their phone or email, they don’t respond to texts, they don’t appear on Facebook. For days they refuse to be available. We get angry, take it personally, look to blame or imagine the worst. But in reality, an obstacle has appeared, telling us that it is not the right time to make contact. We must pull back and wait patiently for a sign to show us differently.

The way I see it, when an obstacle appears, the universe is showing us that it has other plans for us. Do we waste our energy fighting back, or do we acquiesce and say, “Okay, where are you taking me? What am I supposed to learn?”

In my dream, every time I came to the big hill, I’d try like heck to get up it, even though I had already done it all night long and never succeeded. It didn’t matter, the hill was there and I was, of course, going to give it a shot. I accepted the challenge. By the end of my night of dreaming, however, I got the hang of it. By the umpteenth time I’d arrived at the hill, I was finally ready to accept the opposite challenge: to face that the hill was there for another reason altogether, that it was time to stop trying to transcend it and instead turn in a totally new direction.

Sometimes what at first appears to be closing in on us is really showing us our path of heart... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Sometimes what at first appears to be closing in on us is really showing us our path of heart…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Sometimes our challenges are posed by nature, at other times by our own pigheadedness, our inability to be flexible and flowing. We want things to go a certain way and by golly they had better go according to plan! It’s pretty hard to give up our dreams and our perfect scenarios to the possibility of disaster and defeat. If we are going to be in alignment with nature, with our lives as they naturally unfold, however, we must not only accept but face what our obstacles might be trying to tell us about ourselves.

We tend to want to blame, to point out how others have ruined things for us or disappointed us. But once we remove our outward projections, we might find that something really important is being placed in front of us, something we might not be able to fathom at the time. The universe might have other plans for us.

In my dream, I was presented with acquiescing to that which I could not control or override. In my real life, obstacles often reveal themselves in more subtle ways, but they are nonetheless clearly there, asking me to pause and reconsider. Am I just wasting my energy here for no reason? Am I pushing for something that is just not going to be good for me? If I get up that hill, is there something far more complicating and devastating awaiting me on the other side?

I have had several occurrences in my own life where, had I proceeded in the direction I was going in, disaster awaited. I have sidestepped death on more than one occasion. And so, I know how the universe seeks to get our attention, to alert us to danger, in subtle and not so subtle ways.

When we force something that is just not going our way, we may be getting ourselves into serious trouble. My dream was challenging me to take the obstacles seriously, but to be open and flowing as well, to learn acquiescence to the signs and synchronicities that arise in the natural course of life.

Nature acquiesces to the end of one season and the birth of the next... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Nature acquiesces to the end of one season and the birth of the next…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

If we can avoid getting too wrapped up in self-doubt or self-recriminatinion, without going to blame or judgment, obstacles can be used to guide us forward. They offer us the opportunity to question our reality. What am I being shown here? Am I too controlling? Is my ego inflated? Have I lost my connection to my physical and emotional self? Is my illness, my failure, my loss or lack really leading me to my fulfillment, to something totally new and unexpectedly good, rather than the negative disaster I immediately interpret it as?

And, better still, as my dream points out: if we are truly in the Tao, in alignment with nature, with the synchronicities that arise in our lives, there are really no obstacles. Everything comes to us for a reason. Sometimes, it’s only in hindsight that we see this. Sometimes its only in hindsight that we are thankful for all the obstacles that have come into our lives to save us and project us forward into more fulfilling and adventurous lives.

Sometimes it’s just time to turn and go in a new direction!
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Three Ring Circus

Leave a comment
I'd been swimming along when I decided to stop and look around. All of a sudden I noticed that things had changed! - Art by Jan Ketchel
I’d been swimming along when I decided to stop and look around. All of a sudden I noticed that things had changed!
– Art by Jan Ketchel

A couple of months ago, I wrote a blog called Silent Meditation, about my experiences in the presence of a female guru. I had gone to the silent retreat seeking to jolt my yoga and meditation practice to a new level. Now, two months later, I am beginning to string together the unfolding of that intent, coming in many forms of support—in dreams, in continued practice, and in the never-ending experiences of life.

The female guru was known not only for her teachings but also for her singing of the sacred mantras of India. From the time she was a young child she had been recognized for her unique ability. During the meditation session at the retreat, she put on some music and instructed us to focus on the vibration as we silently chanted our mantras and sought inner silence. She hoped that we would find her voice pleasing.

I have always meditated in silence, so it struck me that we would be listening to music. But as I thought about it, I realized that in my weekly yoga class there is always music. There is even a specific vibration in one song that rattles my bones, or at least that is how I experience it. Every time I hear it, the sound vibration seems to enter my body and go right into my teeth and bones and before I know it I’m vibrating. It’s not unpleasant at all, though it has always felt a little strong to me.

The music of the female guru was beautiful, the vibration extremely pleasant, and I found that I could connect to it. Unlike the sound vibration of the music of the yoga class that I also connect with in a different way, her music melodically flowed right into my physical body. I noticed how my muscles and skin responded by going completely relaxed.

Since that silent retreat, I have listened to music during my own practice of yoga and meditation. I’ve tried a few different types of music—drumming, chanting, and melodious singing, as well as other styles. I have settled on the chanting of a Buddhist monk, a man, who like the female guru, was recognized in his youth as being especially gifted in the singing of the sacred music. The vibration of his music strikes in yet another place, right in my heart chakra, matching the energetic vibration of my own heart. His vibratory energy soars right through my organs and then takes me with it, out of my body and into other worlds.

As I look back on these three experiences of musical vibration, I am struck by the three responses I experienced within my own body self. First, there is the skeletal vibration, which I experience each week during yoga class, representing the core of the physical body, the strengthening of which ensures physical stability. Secondly, there is the vibration of the female voice, much like a mother’s soothing touch that my muscles so responded to. The training of the muscles enables physical prowess and fluidity in this world. Thirdly, I find the vibration of the male voice, the Buddhist monk, so deeply penetrating that my heart and emotions immediately respond. Here, in the organs of the body, are the other aspects of the physical self that require honing if a spiritual practice is to be deeply meaningful, fulfilling, and freeing.

As I study these three experiences that have so aligned with my intent to strengthen and deepen my spiritual practice, I am reminded of dreams unfolding simultaneously. One Sunday night, a few weeks ago, I dreamed of a tall man in tails and top hat, the Master of Ceremonies at a three ring circus.

The first night I dreamed of him, I asked for advice. He told me that the first order of business in achieving a balanced spiritual practice was to get the physical body in tiptop shape. This I see as aligning with the yogic vibration of physical prowess. He also encouraged good eating habits and moderation in everything.

The second time I dreamed of him, exactly one week later, also on a Sunday night, he instructed me in establishing a firm spiritual practice and sticking with it. This I see as the meditation practice as encouraged by the female guru, which I have been deepening.

The third time I dreamed of the Master of Ceremonies, last night, I asked for more advice. “Teach me something,” I said. I dreamed of a woman I had known a long time ago. She told me that her mother had died, but that she was always with her, that they connected all the time. This I see as the awakening of the heart chakra to the truth of our vibratory existence, the kind of experience that I have every time I meditate with my chanting Buddhist monk. He takes me soaring. I am one with the vibration, the vibration is one with me, I am one with the energy of the universe.

There are many roads to the sublime... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
There are many roads to the sublime…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

When I woke up this morning, I knew that the Master of Ceremonies had shown me the third ring in the three ring circus of this life, as we endeavor to reconcile our human/spiritual dilemma. The third ring of a balanced spiritual practice is to recognize that we are all comprised of energy and, as such, we are fully capable of existing in many realms simultaneously. It is our job to strengthen our awareness of this and open up to it. It is what the Shamans of Ancient Mexico teach as well, that we are primarily beings comprised of energy. We come from energy and we will return to energy. In the meantime, however, we must bear the tension of navigating life in the physical bodies that we inhabit.

Our job is to become aware of our energetic abilities and find a practice that will train us in the use of all that we truly are comprised of. The Shamans of Ancient Mexico offer the Magical Passes. I have always found yoga and mediation to fit my inner vibration most compatibly. There is music, there is art, there is dance, there are sports, and all kinds of other activities that can lead us to experience the transcendent. Joseph Campbell speaks of running track when in college and twice having experiences of the sublime, when he achieved complete and total alignment with the energy of the universe that he just happened to be flowing in at the time. We can enter the flow of such energetic alignment by happenstance, or we can train ourselves to enter it volitionally, as I work to achieve in my own spiritual practice.

As my vibratory experiences with three types of music point out, if we are seekers, if we are open and aware, we will eventually discover just what strikes the right chord with our own vibration. And then the universe will join in our endeavors and help us out in a myriad of ways. It may take some time to discover just what the right vibratory chord is. I stumbled upon what I needed by opening to some new ideas and challenging myself to have some new experiences.

By setting the intent to find our way to our energetic selves, we open the door to going beyond the three ring circus of life to vibratory experiences in other worlds. In fact, it was what the female guru was suggesting as we listened to her music. She was asking us to connect to the truth of our energetic reality. It is the key to everything, to the mystical and the mysterious, the awareness that we are first and foremost energetic beings, vibratory beings. Whether we exist in the here and now, or whether we have passed on into other dimensions, our connection to everything is energetic.

I thank the people who teach me, my dream teachers, the people that have intersected my life, the seekers who teach about another reality beyond this so solid one. I am thankful for all that comes to me, for all that I experience, energetically and otherwise!

Thank you too!
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: We Are The Change

Leave a comment
Change is constant... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Change is constant…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

We are in the midst of great change. I see it all around me, in the people closest to me and in the world. No one has not changed in some way over the past few months, and even going further back, because change is constant. So, yes, we have all been changing for a long time. It is, however, most apparent right now.

Change comes to us in many ways, in many forms, in the apparent challenges we must face on a daily basis and in our not so apparent core issues. How we decide to react to change is what makes our journey what it is. Do we embrace change or do we hide from change? Do we go with gusto or do we hold ourselves back? Do we pretend it’s not happening, fearful of having to change, or do we seek it out, eager to get our lives going in a new direction?

The events of our lives, our dreams and our waking dreams, the things that happen to us, the signs and synchronicities that shape our experiences, come to guide us, to show us what we need to work on, how to go about it, and what direction we should take. We are constantly being shown who we are and who we have the potential to become. It’s in waking up to this bigger picture, to the oneness of it all, that we finally grasp that our journeys are orchestrated so that we may one day flow easily with the changes that come to greet us. For there is no denying that life is in constant flux and that our biggest challenge, our biggest anxiety-reducer, is to learn to flow with it.

Take nature for example, predictable in many ways—the seasons, the tides, the sun and the moon, the repetitive cycles of birth and death—yet within nature there are other factors that are unpredictable, constantly interweaving within and through the known, yet they are still part of what nature is all about. Storms and winds, earthquakes and volcanoes, are unpredictable. They can be expected at certain times and under certain conditions, but they do not necessarily adhere to a timetable, nor can they be controlled.

Our lives too are like this, our days laid out for us, but within our daily lives come the harbingers of change, the sudden shifts that can knock us off our feet or propel us to spread our wings.

Easier to look outside of us... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Easier to look outside of us…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

It’s easy to look outside of ourselves and see how the rest of the world is doing. It’s easy to see where others are just not getting it right. But our real challenge is to turn inward, to stop focusing on others and pay attention to what is happening in our own nature, in our inner world. In so doing, we become partners to change rather than opponents to the changing nature of things. We become like the wind and the clouds, more easily flowing with what life brings us. We become more consciously aware of the nature of our personal lives.

We begin to see that as we learn to flow with our lives, our lives flow more easily with us. We are not so shaken up by the events in our lives, whether in our personal lives or what is happening in the world, for we see the bigger natural picture, the constantly changing picture. If this happens, then that happens, then something else will come as well, in an ever-unfolding series of events that help us to grow and understand life in ways we had never imagined we could or should.

My inner nature has been pushing me to more firmly ground myself in my spiritual practice, to keep taking it to new levels, going deeper and higher. At times I am more successful than at other times, but what I do notice is that every time I go into my sanctum, my space where I do yoga and meditation, it is easier and easier to tune out the world and tune into my inner world. My persistence is paying off.

Physically there is less resistance, and mentally there is less intrusion. My mind knows what I am asking it to do, and it stands aside. It knows that this is sacred time and that there will still be plenty of time for it later. In fact, for most of the day I fully accept its presence. “At this moment, nothing is more important,” I tell myself. It’s been established: Nothing, at this moment, is more important than this practice.

As we all face the tension of now, of what is happening in our world, as others make decisions that we may not agree with, we must turn inward and ask ourselves where we too are doing the same things to ourselves. What decisions are we making that are just not that good for our well being? It’s not someone else’s problem either, it’s a problem that we all must deal with personally, on an individual level. If we all dealt with universal issues on a personal level perhaps they would no longer arise in the world outside of us—there would be no reason.

Inner practice leads to great change... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Inner practice leads to great change…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Your inner nature may be pushing you in its own unique way. The first step in beginning a spiritual practice it to begin listening to what is being said and to begin looking around at what you are being shown. The eyes and ears are a sure means of exploring just what is being asked or shown. Then a real dialogue can begin.

Your spirit will always find a way to connect. You just have to be open. Watch how nature unfolds in your daily life, in the storms and gentle breezes both, in the turmoil and the calm. Life is leading you, naturally, in waking and dreaming.

In oneness,
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: To The Deeper Within

Leave a comment
One day we must all take off and head into the great unknown... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
One day we must all take off and head into the great unknown…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

We must all take the hero’s journey. At some point in our lives it becomes imperative. When we stand on the threshold, about to take the first step into the unknown, we feel totally alone. No one has ever done what we are about to do. Our journey is our own to have, to experience, and to return from.

Perhaps our first journey is to leave our parents at the age of five and go off to school, to get on the school bus and return at the end of the day having had an experience that no one else has ever had. We must all do this at some point in our lives if we are to become mature, independent beings.

“Your real duty is to go away from the community to find your bliss,” writes Joseph Campbell. And it’s true, we all have to leave the known, the easy comforts of a provided life and experience the discomforts of life on our own.

There are many stages of the hero’s journey. There is that first stage of leaving home, of going off to college or moving far from where we grew up, to begin anew, as youth chomping at the bit for our own experiences beyond the world of our parents. Many never take another hero’s journey after that. We settle into our lives, become complacent, disillusioned, perhaps angry at the world for not meeting us in the way we expected. Our spirit, however, never gives up. It comes knocking, constantly asking us to please get up and do something to change ourselves!

Sometimes the call of the spirit is finally answered later in life. The journey is taken up again, when other duties have been met, when our maturity allows us to shed some of what has held us back in the past, when we are finally ready. Others continue the hero’s journey unabated, letting something else besides the dictates of society and family tradition guide them on their way, those free-spirited ones who never seem to settle in one place for very long. Others constantly refuse the call, even late into life; even upon their death beds they do not heed the proddings of their spirit to experience the bliss of life.

There is another journey... to the Deeper Within... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
There is another journey…
to the Deeper Within…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Besides the hero’s journey in the world, there is another kind of hero’s journey, the inner journey, the call of the spirit to encounter and experience the Deeper Within, as I like to call it. The journey into the Deeper Within is as frightening as taking that first step on the young hero’s journey, when leaving home for the first time and finding out what it means to be a fully responsible adult.

The Deeper Within calls to us throughout our lives. Calling and calling, it asks us to come closer, to hear what it has to tell us of the treasures and mysteries of the deeper self, like a deep well, the bottom of which is endless. The Deeper Within is where our true bliss lies, where our real transformation awaits. Once we heed this call, we are offered the opportunity to go on a journey that never ends.

To be ready to encounter and experience this Deeper Within we must allow ourselves to take the first part of the hero’s journey in the real world. We must leave home, grow up, create a life for ourselves on our own terms, as fully independent beings. We must gather experiences, learn what it means to face our fears and test our merits, to have gains and losses, to have love and to lose love, to build our egos and strengthen our spirits in a world that is often ignorant, disharmonious, and could care less.

Once we have had experiences in the real world, we might be ready to have experiences in the Deeper Within, where everything that we have learned from being in the outer world will be utilized and tested, proven to be useful or useless in our inner world. In the Deeper Within we will finally meet our spirit face to face, all that it encompasses, our light side and our dark side. We must be prepared for such encounters.

Our ego, strengthened by our life experiences, will prove its worth, showing us what we are really made of as we dive into the Deeper Within. The shamanic process of recapitulation is taking the hero’s journey into the Deeper Within. It entails facing what has controlled us and what has guided us, what has supplied us with our energy and what has drained us of our energy. Recapitulation is the hero’s journey to reconnecting with the spirit self. During recapitulation we surrender our ego to this spirit self, so that it may guide us to full transformation.

As we return to the real world from our hero’s journey through the Deeper Within, we must ease slowly back into society, quietly and humbly take our place again, transformed yet fully present. We return to life like a newborn, full of a new kind of knowledge that others cannot totally grasp. We return from taking the journey into the Deeper Within speaking a strange new language, having had visions and mystical encounters. We return with a new way of perceiving the world, with a new kind of awareness.

Complexities of the deeper self blissfully revealed upon taking the hero's journey... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Complexities of the deeper self blissfully revealed upon taking the hero’s journey…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Everything is now so clear to us, life explained on so many levels, death faced and found to be nothing more than this life extended, experienced in another state. We return with a new kind of sober fearlessness, with a new kind of detachment, and yet we feel and experience life with far greater love and compassion than previously possible. We emerge fully aware of our universal interconnectedness and our energetic connection to all living beings. Yes, we return with blissfulness coursing through us, having experienced bliss, having fully known what bliss really is.

Our new self wants everyone else to experience the bliss of life in this manner, to take the hero’s journey to the Deeper Within and transform too! But we learn soon enough that not everyone is ready. “I can’t read all that spiritual crap!” someone said to me the other day. I was not offended, nor did I feel sorry for the person. I simply acknowledged the journey that was being taken.

There are millions of kinds of journeys being taken simultaneously. Some people are here, others there. But the thing to remember is that we all had to start somewhere. We all had to take that first step into the unknown at some point, whether in a past life or in this life. At one time we all had to, and have to, take the first step on the hero’s journey to the Deeper Within too.

Wishing you all well, wherever you are on your hero’s journey. Keep going!
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Those Darned Tiny Seeds

Leave a comment
There it is! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
There it is!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

I dream a universal dream. I hear these words clearly spoken: “The truth is but a tiny seed.” And then I see a seed, a speck, a flash of insight. Then black clouds and white clouds roll in, covering the seed. I know they are the dark clouds of fear and the white clouds of illusion, covering what we don’t want to know, what we will not face. I understand that this is what we do with our deepest truths—we hide them from ourselves. They are still there, however, tiny seeds waiting to be discovered.

I lie awake in the night and know that I must always dare myself to part the clouds and find the meaning of the seeds. I must not let the seeds of truth lie there untended, never properly nurtured. If I don’t tend to them they will grow moldy and create problems.

Contemplation of this dream leads me back along a winding road, to a spark of a memory that emerges, grows, and is nurtured as I face the truth of it.

I was living in New York City in 1984, working for a publishing company. It was the height of the AIDS crisis. An office meeting was called because a man among us had AIDS, in fact was dying. I will call him David. David was about 50, a man of energy and vitality, an actor and singer, so sweet and kind, so gentle and considerate. He kept a jar of chocolates on his desk. He’d invite anyone in to sit, have a chocolate, and shoot the breeze. His health had been steadily deteriorating. In the few years that I knew him, I watched him go from healthy physique to skeletal sickness. He worked until he could no longer do so. The day that the meeting was called he was still coming into the office on occasion, though on that day he was not there.

The meeting was a real eye-opener for me. When asked to be open and honest, assured that no one was taking notes, people revealed themselves. People I had thought kind and compassionate showed that they were judgmental, bigoted and homophobic, hate-filled and fearful. There was a guy I had a slight romantic interest in. When he spoke at this meeting, a very intelligent guy, I lost all interest in him. I was, in fact, floored by the ignorance I heard. Was I being judgmental myself? Probably, but that’s where I was at the time. I could not believe that others did not share the same love that I felt for this deeply suffering fellow human being. On that day, however, I also saw what was kept so carefully guarded at all of our cores, the fearful seed of truth that we will all face death one day.

David got sicker and sicker. About two weeks before he died a friend came into my office and asked me, as an illustrator, if I would make a card for him that everyone could sign. I accepted the assignment with a heavy heart, knowing how important it would be.

A happy llama... - Drawing by Jan Ketchel
A happy llama…
– Drawing by Jan Ketchel

I knew that David loved llamas—the furry animal kind—that he’d had some transformative experience with them while traveling, and so I knew I had to incorporate them into the card. I faced also that he was dying, that he was leaving this world, and so I didn’t want to paint a ‘let’s pretend you’re NOT dying’ picture.

I sat at my drawing board for a long time and then I let the illustration come through me. I channeled it. It flowed out of my pens and brushes, a four-part comic strip story. Winged angel llamas grazed peacefully in a bucolic setting. A new winged angel llama flew up to be with them and was lovingly welcomed amongst them. Contented and at peace, he too grazed and frolicked happily, finally at home among the llama angels. When I was done I sat back and looked at the card. It was beautiful and sensitive, but it frightened me. I’d written something inside too, about his friends waiting to greet him again, or something like that.

I stared at what I had created for a long time, left it sitting, came back to it over and over again, finally decided that it was just right. It had to be right, for David; deeply respectful of this man who was facing an early death with such graciousness, his sense of humor intact throughout his illness, his thankfulness for having had such a good life. It had to be the right, meaningful, personal, sendoff.

I brought it to work and handed it over to my friend, a little fearful that she might think it was too much, that I had gone too far, for I had a sense that it was a little daring, confronting the fact of death, even in this gentle way. “This is great!” she said. “Oh my God, he’ll love it.” It went around the office and everyone signed it, everyone loved it, except one person.

Normally a pussycat, and someone I knew as a friend, stormed into my office. “How dare you!” he fumed, a big man, barely able to keep his voice down. “He’s dying! You can’t send a card like that to a dying man! You can’t put llamas on his card! He loves llamas! I won’t sign it!”

Sometimes we cannot control what lies in our darkness... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Sometimes we cannot control what lies in our darkness…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

My retort was just as angry as his, though I did not hold back. I didn’t care that anyone else heard me either. I stood up from my chair, looked up into his red face towering above me, and yelled at him. I told him that he didn’t have to sign the card, that I felt the card was totally appropriate and that the llamas were there for a very good reason, exactly because David had such a spiritual connection with them. And in the frightened face of that big man, I knew I was facing my own fear of death, what he himself could not face in his friend. His fear was real, and yet I would not back down or even sympathize.

He stomped out of my office in an angry huff and didn’t speak to me for a long time. He stared daggers at me every time I passed his desk. He stepped away from me on the subway train that we both rode. In turn, I had to face why I got so angry when he confronted me. Why did I usually get angry like that when confronted by something, especially something that I knew to be true? Why did I always run from the truth? I could have been more diplomatic: “Well, I felt the same way at first, but that’s just what came to me, and it felt right, but of course you don’t have to sign it if it doesn’t feel right,” was what I should have said, but I knew there was more to it. I had to face, not only that I was really just as scared of death as he was, but that for some unknown reason I had vitriolic anger boiling inside me. How easily it slipped out!

Eventually, I approached the big man and apologized for screaming at him. By this time word had gotten around that David did indeed love the card. He sent back word, thanking me, telling me that he kept it near him, looked at it often, laughed and felt so happy every time he looked at it. It was in his arms when he died. I’d also heard that it ended up incorporated into an AIDS quilt, on a section commemorating David.

I know now that no matter where we are in our lives, our inner world is interwoven in our everyday world. The seeds of our truths lie at our core, festering and asking to be reckoned with, consciously on occasion, but, more often than not, unconsciously. Even those who live lives greatly disconnected from their inner world, who have no sense of its existence, are dominated by it in a myriad of ways: in anger, depression, jealousy, pain; in acting out; in feelings of worthlessness, inflation, hopelessness; in fear.

Our inner world dominates us until we finally clear away the black clouds of darkness and the white clouds of illusion and reveal the seeds of truth at our core for what they truly are and what they truly mean. And then we are offered the chance of gaining some equilibrium, for otherwise we are sorely off balance.

Finally, I have learned that signs and synchronicities constantly come to point us inwardly, yet they are often missed, dismissed, or too frightening to bear. But it is only in the bearing of the tension of them that we discover just where we need to go and just what we need to face. In facing our deepest issues, those signs and synchronicities take on magical significance, their messages offering direct experience of life on a totally new level, out of the ordinary and into the extraordinary.

Looking at those seeds very closely,
Jan