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: Going Out Of My Mind & Loving It!

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Once, a long time ago, when I was explaining to Chuck how I had gone out of my body, frightened that I was losing my mind, he blurted out with a big laugh: “It’s good to go out of your mind!” Anyone who works with Chuck will hear him say this at some point.

Every time he said this, it shook me. Every time I had another out-of-body, out-of-mind experience, I’d hear his voice telling me that it was good, that I should just let it happen, as often as possible. I could hear him telling me to keep training myself, in a shamanic sense: to let go of the constructs of this world by releasing my mind from attaching to them.

Like the frozen pond through the woods, our spirit lies waiting...

I knew he was right, but it took me a long time to be comfortable with letting myself go out of my mind. Now I can’t wait. Each day, as I sit and meditate, I await the moment of release from the things my mind grasps at. Sometimes I’m able to easily free myself, at other times I must sit for a long time as I work through the cogitations of my mind.

So what does that really mean, to lose the mind? In a shamanic sense, it means letting go of our judgments, our critical voices that tell us we cannot possibly be having this experience. It means shutting down our attachments to the known world and allowing ourselves to experience something outside of our body and our brain, momentarily forgetting everything our scientists, our religions, our parents, our teachers have told us is possible. It means freeing ourselves, even momentarily, from all that we perceive as real, tangible, and solid, and just letting ourselves have the experience.

Losing the mind in this way is a very sought after shamanic move, as Chuck always taught me. When Chuck suggested that I lose my mind as often as possible, he was asking me to face the dissolution of this world, this reality, and everything that I had been attached to my whole life. This went far beyond thoughts and perceptions. In fact, it extended even to letting go of the experiences themselves as anything to attach to. It took me a long time to understand this as well. Why wouldn’t I want to attach to those most amazing and transformative experiences?

Where are we caught? What are we attached to? What is attached to us?

In fact, Chuck was suggesting that, rather than seek out the experiences themselves, what I wanted was the enhanced awareness they offered. When we allow ourselves to lose our minds, we offer ourselves glimpses into infinity, glimpses of greater awareness. As we allow ourselves to have experiences that are out of the ordinary, we allow ourselves freedom from the attachments that hold us back in our daily lives too.

I had always had magical experiences in my life, but they got dismissed because of course they could not be true. They just could not happen in the world I lived in. But once I learned of the mystical experiences of the saints of my Catholic school upbringing, I had an inkling that in certain circles such phenomena were totally acceptable. But how would I ever be in a position to discuss such things? Even the Catholic Church, though it reveres such experiences, does not do so easily. It was in talking to Chuck about the shamanic view of the world that I finally found such experiences valued. What he described offered explanations for everything I had experienced, allowing me to release my lifelong fears that I was just plain crazy.

Under Chuck’s tutelage, I learned to balance the mystical experiences of my spirit while living in a world of solid objects and solid declarations of reality. In my inner world, I knew that reality did not work the way I had been taught. My spirit had always sought a far greater worldview. It had already experienced a world without boundaries, without limitations, without judgments. However, greater acceptance that such a world was actually a viable reality and fully accessible was not a process that happened overnight. It took a lot of work and incremental acceptance of a new sense of reality, based on my personal experiences.

In learning shamanic concepts, my psychic experiences, my meditation experiences, my magical, out-of-body experiences found a home, in a place of deep resonance. And that is when I learned that the experiences alone are not meant to be attached to, as Chuck had once suggested. For a time they were deeply meaningful—present and necessary to aid in growing—though eventually they wore thin. And then, the only thing that mattered was what came next to challenge me. It was in this manner that I began to understand that it was not the experiences themselves that were important in the long run, but just how open I could be to keep going, to keep changing myself, and to keep breaking through my attachments to a known world.

Grasping self pecks away, challenging us to change, to keep going...

Every day I ask the universe to lead me, to teach me, to show me something important, to challenge me to let go of my mind, my self-importance, my grasping, needy, ignorant self. I ask that I learn from my experiences, and then I ask that I be freed from those experiences so that I can be open to another, and another, and another, with the intent that I never cease growing.

What am I to learn today? What am I to be shown; what gift of experience will I be offered? And can I accept it? Can I use it to go to a new level of my life on this earth, and enhance my spiritual awareness as well?

The world is now a far larger place, extending far beyond the mind and body, beyond what is real, as I have embraced a new idea of self as energy driven by a spirit that does not want to return to slumber. Real, to me, is no longer restricted to what others have taught me is real, but is open to interpretation. Real is what I experience. And that kind of real is enough for me.

To those who seek greater awareness, I humbly pass on what I have learned, as I ask myself to constantly face my ignorance and continue on this same path of enlightenment: Be open. Let your experiences come to you and, without judgment, release yourself from the cogitations of the mind. Come back to the world you live in more firmly grounded, more balanced in spirit and body, with a greater awareness of the possibilities that exist for you.

Your experiences will be uniquely yours, as mine are mine. But remember, the possibilities in this world are endless. Seek without grasping; experience will seek you.

Offered most humbly,
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Facing the Inevitable

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The changing moon... early this morning

We make the decision to change and then we must face the challenges of having made that decision, each day, as the old world seeks us out and attempts to draw us back into our old comforts. With the advent of the year 2012 many people are suddenly aware of change. However, such change was intended long ago, set in motion and already in full swing before most of us were aware of it.

We too set our own intentions, activate change by our thoughts and desires, often unaware that we are doing so. Life itself has its own agenda, nature taking us all on a journey of change that we might only contemplate when we are older and ready to face the inevitable.

I believe that all of us who are alive now have been participating in a transformative energy our whole lives. Why are we suddenly so enamored, so struck, so frightened of this transformative energy?

I personally experience this energy as powerful yet also as subtle. This energy is confrontational though it also gently moves us along in the direction we need to go in. This energy asks us all to change and to face the fact that we are helpless in its wake.

Every day we are challenged to lose our self-importance, to embrace a larger world view with compassion and genuine love for all beings. At the same time we are asked, by the energy of now alone, to simplify our lives so that rather than contribute to a crumbling world we acquiesce to the truth of it. In a very grassroots way, we are asked to support a new world based on honesty, integrity, openness, compassion, and kindness across the board.

The Internet alone has expanded our views, introducing us to a far greater sense of the beauty and intelligence of ourselves as a species, as well as the ignorance and ugliness of our species as well. We are all part of this expanded view that the Internet affords us. We are all intelligent and ignorant, beautiful and ugly. We are all struggling to understand the meaning of our existence and the reason for our frailties. And we are all responsible for somehow finding a balance so that we, as human beings and the earth itself, may align in creating a far greater world. All struggles are valid, all actions necessary if change is to happen.

The energy of human progress constantly takes us outside of ourselves. As we face another day of challenge and conflict in the world around us, we must not forget that there is another world that constantly challenges and calls to us as well: the inner world.

On this day, as our Internet freedoms are challenged and their restrictions protested, as Wikipedia and many other sites go black, I will be in a most unique and humble position, attending a most natural part of our existence: death.

I will turn away from what is happening in the world to sit beside an elderly relative who is facing the end of her life. I will turn toward the timelessness of all life, the inevitability of nature to take us where we all must go. I will face the ultimate truth: We are all going to die. I am going to die. You are going to die.

I don’t mean to be morbid, but I also know I cannot stop what is natural. The intent that we must all change was set long ago; before we even existed we knew that one day we would die. There comes a point when we will all be challenged to face the inevitable. We must learn now, while we are alive and well, how to acquiesce and go with the flow, with awareness.

I see the little and big changes that we must face every day as no different from death. They are teaching us how to face death when it comes. Every day, as we are challenged to keep pushing ourselves to grow, to move into new lives as our circumstances change and our spirits push us, we are preparing ourselves to face our deaths.

If we see each moment of change as a little death we prepare ourselves for our final death. We learn what it means to be aware, what it means to acquiesce, what it means to go with the flow, and our fears of death diminish, for we have practiced for it our whole lives. When we are able to face death as just another moment of change into new life, when we accept the inevitability of both death and new life, we have indeed transformed. You see, important times of transformation don’t have to wait, we can experience them every day, as we challenge ourselves to constantly grow and change.

I am grateful for the position I find myself in today. And, as the shamans of Carlos Castaneda’s line say: I am a being who is going to die.

I keep this in mind every day.
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Inner Child Work

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I’ve been doing inner child work for years. I’ve learned so much from long encounters, from hours of what Jung termed active imagination, from weeks of inner focus, as I’ve attended to my spirit. I sometimes feel that it’s like driving a car; sometimes I’m aware that I’m doing it, alert and conscious of everything I pass along the way, at other times I arrive at my destination wondering just how I got there.

I do inner child work especially when confronted with a dilemma or when conflicts arise. I know that it’s imperative that I constantly check in with my inner child and see how she’s doing. Although my personal challenges are, for the most part, clearly defined now, I also know that sometimes they are not the issues that need attention but that something else is calling to me, some deeper more profound need is making itself known.

Self-reflection?

I have a dilemma. How do I solve it? I ask for guidance. I wait for an answer. Meanwhile I have my own agenda. For the time being my personal agenda rules. It takes over. It’s all I can think about: how to set it in motion, how to contrive to make it happen, how to make it meaningful. I can’t get away from it. As I allow it to assert itself, it begins to dominate not only my thinking but my actions as well. This feels like part of the process I must go through, but deep inside I feel restless. Something else is stirring in me, raising a protest, asking me if this is really what I intend to do. I push it away.

“No,” I say, “I want it to happen my way. I want to be in control. I want to set up my life in such a manner that I can determine not only the process but the outcome as well.”

“Sorry,” I hear. “You are not going to be granted that wish today. Today you are going to have to struggle and eventually you are going to have to let go.”

“No, I don’t want to. I want things to work out my way!”

As this tug-of-war goes on, I know, deep inside, that I must stop playing this game. From experience, I know that the sooner I acquiesce to a process that is already in progress, already laid out for me, the better things will unfold. This is how I resolve my dilemma: I acquiesce to the process, but it takes deep work to get to this place of acquiescence.

I know I must dissect my personal agenda and discover why I am so attached to it. I must face the fact that I may be trying to hold onto old ideas, old agendas, and old comforts that no longer serve me. I must face that even though I may want those things, they are not good for me; they no longer serve who I am becoming, who I have the potential to become, and whom I need to become to evolve.

Once I’ve studied my personal agenda, the next step is to turn inward. I must get quiet in order to do this. I must let myself have a few moments of meditation or simply sit quietly and comfortably. I must ask myself: What is really going on here? What am I missing? Am I just reluctant, avoidant, affronted? Am I being shown something I must embrace; or the opposite, that this is something I must refuse?

Sitting in calmness allows the voice of our inner child to be heard. If we listen carefully we will hear truths spoken that we may not have wanted to hear before, that we may not have been ready to hear until now. If we allow ourselves to become a frightened child again, knowing that we are facing changes that we don’t want to happen while we also remain our adult selves, we may reach a new level of understanding about how we tend to function on a normal basis.

We all have a needy, wounded child inside us. No matter how much inner work we do that child will always be present, suggesting deeper issues that need attention. Its needs are endless, ancient needs. Eventually we learn that they stretch far back, into eons, into past lives full of similar needs left unresolved.

Ready to get off the well worn path and enter the abyss?

As we do inner child work, our spirit will repeatedly guide us in how to sit alongside our child self, perhaps in discomfort at first, but later in full acceptance as we face the ancient knowing child self and ask it to tell us what comes next. What must I face this time? Where are you taking me?

We must be prepared to face our fears. We must accept that our inner child self of this lifetime is frightened of change. We must accept that our adult self of this lifetime is afraid of change too. Both parts of us must constantly face the truth that change is challenging us to face our fears and conquer them with awareness.

Whenever I sit in calmness with my adult self and my frightened child self, I know that there is something else beneath the fears that I must also face. I must go even deeper. I must reach down to that far more evolved ancient child self, the one who has already lived these life challenges before. This is the knowing self that constantly challenges me to go beyond my present self. This is the place where I will gain clarity on what to do to resolve my dilemma.

Clarity often comes in calmness, delivering a direct blow. Much like getting hit over the head, it strikes quickly and with utter clarity. When we are ready we are able to accept it and immediately act upon it. If we are not ready it will remain churning inside us until we are ready.

When our world is challenging us, even collapsing on us, our deepest dilemma is often in learning how to acquiesce, to let go, to not fight as we have been taught, but to let the process guide us. Often we may find the deeper meaning inside, rather than in constantly looking for reason and answer outside. Sometimes we just can’t have things our way.

There is so much more to doing inner child work. As we work with what our inner child presents, going deeper and deeper, we get to know just who that child is, and just who we are and why. Eventually, we all arrive at that place where the ancient child self speaks. Often the sound of that ancient child’s voice may be distant and difficult to decipher, but if we let our personal agenda go, for even a second, we may be able to accept the truth it brings us. Sometimes just a hint of something different, a deep inner knowing, may waft up and offer us just enough to help us along, to make a decision that will indeed set us on a new path.

What lies in the vastness of the inner world?

The inner world is vast, bigger than the outer world. Jung once noted that once we do inner work we will no longer be able to ready novels, because nothing can compare to what we have already encountered inside the vastness of the self. I have found this to be true. I personally can no longer read a novel. I am quickly bored, knowing that inside the self reside all the mysteries and horror stories that I once enjoyed reading, the adventures and relationships I loved to tap into, other people’s lives I’d turn to. All of those things, and more, reside inside us, in the vastness of our inner world, just waiting to be tapped into.

As we let ourselves be guided through the terrors inside us, we arrive at precipice after precipice. And each time we stand on the brink of change we know that we must take the leap into the abyss that yawns before us, if we are to keep evolving. That is where our riches lie, where our thrills await us, where our adversaries lurk, where our beauties hide, and where our spirits will greet us.

Going ever more deeply inward, we soon discover that our outer world is less threatening, less frightening, less terrifying, for we discover that it cannot present us with anything as frightening as we have already faced within. This is what Jung learned and this is what we also may learn as we continue our inner child work.

Thank you for reading, and may you all enjoy the adventure of a lifetime, inside the self.

Love,
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Suffering Resistance

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Inevitable change

Sentinel crows perch high in the trees warning of inevitable change. Other crows swoop down into the garden and peck away at the composting matter that I’ve laid there, hoping for just such help in breaking it down into mulch in time for the spring planting. I watch as they scratch, bite and jab at the remnants of our eating habits, taking what they want, leaving the rest in tatters. This is the inevitable process of nature in flux. Nature does not resist change.

I fight a virus, taking homeopathic remedies and herbal decoctions. I decide that I do not want to be sick, yet I know I must take care of myself so that I do not fall into its welcoming arms. I elect to watch my energy, because I know that illness is draining, that it will suck my energy like a vampire, grabbing me in its smothering embrace if I am not alert. This is change that I personally elect to resist.

Change is natural, change is necessary for life to evolve, yet resistance is as natural as change. Sometimes we cannot resist illness, we must allow it to take us to new places. Sometimes we cannot resist where life elects to take us either. We must acquiesce, even against our will. As we allow ourselves to acquiesce to the transformative learning process of the recapitulation journey, we discover how to use both change and resistance to our advantage.

Our spirit constantly urges us to change, to just let go and see where life takes us. This is usually what is behind our resistance. We feel resistance because something inside us will not leave us alone. As we fight against it we suffer. In resistance we feel pain, sadness, remorse, regret; we feel abandoned, wounded, and rejected; we blame others, shame ourselves, and bear a heavy burden of guilt; and we experience deep despair at the cruelties of life. We become depressed, ill, nervous, anxious, afraid. We fight the natural process of mulching our souls into submission. We refuse the call to discover what they want to show us. We resist the journey they offer to take us on. We reject the truths they constantly whisper in our ears. And so we must suffer.

In taking on the natural process of recapitulation in full awareness—the life review that we will all do as we age anyway—we offer ourselves the opportunity to fully resolve our issues now, so that we do not die still suffering; so that we do not die regretful that we have not lived a better life, a fuller, happier, kinder, more loving life. In constantly resisting the natural flow of our lives we harden against our own spirit, refusing its call out of fear of having to change. But if we look around at the world we will notice that change is inevitable. Life itself is inevitable. The crows in my trees and garden tell me this every day. “Keep going,” they say. “Keep changing. Note that change is coming all the time. Decide how you are going to handle it. Are you ready to acquiesce? Or is it better to resist its onslaught this time and conserve your energy for better use later?”

As I did my recapitulation I learned that I did have to acquiesce, that it was an inevitable process and I needed to allow for it. But I also learned that it was impossible to simply let go, that the process itself was leading me through my resistance and my acquiescence in a most natural way. I had to learn how my own process was going to unfold. I had to learn how my spirit was guiding me. I had to learn to trust it and the process itself. I had to acquiesce to the inevitable natural flow of it, learning as I did that when I was ready it was right beside me, taking me along on a most amazing process of change. When I pushed for change, it did not necessarily happen. It was only when I was truly ready for it that it came, in a most appropriate and deeply meaningful manner.

As we go into this New Year, we must note the inevitability of change. It is going to happen no matter what we do. Our process must be open and flowing, yet we must be aware of the need to conserve our energy. We must learn to care for ourselves, both in our resistance—as I do to the virus that teases me because I know it’s the right kind of resistance—as well as in our ability to flow with the inevitability of change.

We must be open and aware of the process of change. We must give a little and hold back a little, yet in the end we must acknowledge that when we are truly ready our process will ease us along, our resistance will find its way to acquiescence, our spirit’s guidance acceptable, our suffering over.

In resistance we grow too, for our resistance shows us where we must change. It shows us where we suffer and why we suffer. The biggest challenge and the biggest release comes in no longer resisting our suffering, but in allowing it to guide us to change. It is only then, as we undergo a process of transformation, that we recoup our personal energy long caught in our suffering. It is then that we really learn how to use it well. It is then that we discover we can resist suffering because we truly understand that it is no longer where we want to spend our energy.

As 2012 unfolds, may we all find how best to use our energy, for ourselves and others, naturally flowing with the evolutionary intent that will no longer be held back.

Going with the flow, intending awareness,
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: In the Tension of the Opposites

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I dream all night of gaining serenity and stillness, of aligning spine and chakras and achieving inner peace. I dream this process over and over again, constantly turning inward throughout the night. I wake to hear that Chuck has dreamed the opposite: violent dreams of murder and rampage on a college campus that he cannot control. He did not lose his awareness, tried to alert people to the truth of the perpetrator, a professor, but could only minimally hold him at bay. Though he attempts to engage authorities, violence prevails. We realize that as we slept side by side throughout the night our dreams created a balance. We slept in the tension of the opposites.

I see our dreaming experience duplicating the energy of our times, the masculine being balanced by the feminine and vice versa. There is always going to be violence, just as there is always the capacity within us all to bring ourselves to inner calm.

As this year comes to a close, I note the tension of our times. The energy of discontent being spurred by a need for all people on the planet to be nurtured and cared for, the energy of the movements for change asserting a new kind of masculine energy so that the feminine may prevail. The energy of our times asks that the planet be treated in the same manner, the overbearing paternal energy of greed and power relinquished now to the nurturing energy of the maternal.

This is our birthing time...

I see this energy of now and the energy that Chuck and I slept through last night as the energy of our birthing time, the energy of the universe righting itself as we go into 2012, perhaps long predicted, but definitely right. Though the Mayan calendar speaks of endings we must keep in mind that endings also mean birth into new life and new possibility. The quest we are now on as human beings on our planet, Earth, is the quest for balance, for fairness, for caring compassion so that all things, human and animal—nature in all its abundance—may prevail in a new manner.

My dreams say: Go inward constantly, realign, work your way through your personal issues as you go deeper and deeper into the calmness within. Find anchoring stillness within as you turn from the disturbances without. We are all capable of shifting ourselves into stillness, my dreams say. We are all capable of recapitulating ourselves to a new place, to a new era of self.

We are all capable of shifting the old masculine energy of control and domination into new alignment by letting our feminine energy bring us to a place of inner calm. We are all capable of becoming the maternal self we have long sought outside of ourselves, just as we are capable of changing the masculine self, toppling it from its place of power that we have long felt was so necessary. We are all capable of releasing ourselves from what we carry within as we bear the tension of the opposites, as we birth through the energy of our times, as we watch the old energy disperse in the ending energy that is now upon us.

We are in the throes of birthing to our new selves. Let us not get lost in despair or fear, but let us take advantage of the facts that are clear right now: We are all in turmoil of some sort. It is right. It is exactly where we need to be if we are to change.

We are all asked to do the ultimate balancing act, to constantly realign as we bear the tension of the opposites, as we take in the truth of the violence around us. As Chuck’s dreams tell us, violence is real, take it in, let it go through us, and then let us sit in the momentary stillness that even incremental release allows. Calmly align another chakra, strengthening the inner self in the truth, knowing that we are in perfect alignment with our times.

Keep going inward as the energy of this ending time pushes us into our next birthing. This is also the energy of recapitulation. It’s alright. It’s where we’re supposed to be.

Jan