Category Archives: Jan’s Blog

Welcome!

Currently, I put most of my energy into the weekly channeled messages, the daily Soulbytes, and the completion of The Recapitulation Diaries. An occasional blog does still get written when the creative urge strikes. Archived here are the blogs I wrote for many years 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: Intending Change

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I have been practicing intent as prescribed by the seers of ancient Mexico to enact change. Every day I state my intent and let it go out into the universe. I shout out or silently speak the word: INTENT! Sometimes I don’t even feel that I have to keep repeating each personal intent that I have set, I just shout the word INTENT and ask that my already prescribed intent bind with the intent of the seers of ancient Mexico, with the intent of the women seers, with don Juan, and with the intent of good, because I feel that it is important to imbue my intent with pureness of heart.

In the old days, before I did a recapitulation of my childhood and learned about the seers of ancient Mexico, I would take drastic measures to force change in my life. My favorite method of enacting change in those days was to move, sometimes across the country or even sometimes across the ocean to another country. I once counted eleven moves in seven years, from state to state, city to city, apartment to apartment. Sometimes I moved alone, sometimes with a partner or with a husband. When it was impossible to move house I would rearrange the furniture in every room, shoving and pushing sofas, beds, dressers, bookshelves around until I got just the right feeling that I was seeking. Often I was seeking a sense of contentment, peace of mind, inner quiet and if my outer environment could reflect that I could calm down.

Restlessness was more often than not the catalyst for these moves, a restlessness that I bore my entire life but never quite understood as a deeply inner restlessness. I thought I just needed to keep moving all the time, that I was innately a person who sought experience and adventure, but it wasn’t until I sat down with Chuck and began to explore that restlessness that it revealed itself as something else. It took a while for me to fully grasp that with all of that moving and rearranging I was trying to run away from none other than myself.

During the recapitulation of my early childhood I understood just what it was that I was running from, devastatingly frightening memories of experiences of near annihilation that would have sent anyone fleeing. I learned to sit in one place and bear the tension of those memories as they reappeared, not to haunt me this time, but to teach me something about myself. I learned that, even though I wanted to get up and run, sell my house and move to another town, another city, another country, I did have the courage to stay and face the demons, as I had once done so strikingly well as a child.

In facing my demons, both my old abuser and my personal inner demons who had stood by me for the first fifty years of life, becoming increasingly more familiar as each year passed, I learned not only about how useful they had always been to me, but also how well I had utilized them to keep going, to stay not only alive but to grow up and eventually be ready to recapitulate. I learned that my inner demons were not all scary beings, that many of them helped me, that in fact I controlled many of them for my own purposes. I learned how powerful I had become, mostly in order to keep them quiet and to feel safe.

Now after having learned the lessons of recapitulation, one of them being that we hold everything inside us, I no longer feel the urge to run when I feel the need for change in my life. I know that in simply sitting, by intending change on an energetic level, I can profoundly impact my life and the lives of those around me. When restlessness hits me these days, I acknowledge its powerful intent. I thank it for alerting me to the fact that I am perhaps stagnating again and that, yes, I do indeed need to shift, but then I sit with it. I ask it what it wants, why it came at this moment, and I look for the deeper meaning inside myself now, rather than focusing it outside of myself.

When the universe sends me a sign asking me to change I know that it means I must re-examine where I am and why I am here. Perhaps it indicates that an inner course correction is necessary, or that I am not fully present each day, or that I have slipped a little too far from what is most meaningful in my life. Perhaps it indicates that I have fallen back into an old pattern of behavior that no longer works for me, that I am doing something to myself that is harmful or just plain old boring. Perhaps it is pointing out something as simple as an old idea or judgment of myself that is simply not true, but perseverates along an old path of thinking, a trench long ago traversed and worn deep, a trench that I actually got myself out of a long time ago.

Perhaps when restlessness arises now it is time to reenter that trench one last time and look more closely, with eyes wide open, at the false images and ideas of myself that I once had, to now fully grasp how wrong they were and are. Then it is time to turn my eyes upon the truth of where I am now, who I am now, and more fully embrace that changed being that I have worked so hard to become.

Perhaps when restlessness comes knocking now it is just telling me that it is okay to be me. It is okay to intend change, to keep going, to want to grow and to evolve. It is okay to leave the past behind, but only when it is fully revealed and done. It is perfectly acceptable to move into life more fully whole and present, truths accepted, self accepted. It is perfectly acceptable to fulfill even more of my personal potential in a more meaningful way, without fear that someone will be offended or that I have to carry old burdens or demons that are no longer useful.

Intending change, by sending our intent to the universe that is so ready to help us, is perfectly all right and perfectly right. It is perfectly acceptable to keep seeking to be all that we can be. After all, what else are we here for?

INTENT! INTENT! INTENT!

If you wish, feel free to share or comment in the Post Comment section below.

Sending you all love and good wishes,
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Magic & Insight

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A few weeks ago, I began reading a book called Anastasia, the first book in The Ringing Cedars Series, that someone had mentioned to me over a year ago. It is another “magical” book—series of books really—infused with powerful energy. I finished reading Anastasia and one night last week, before bed, I picked up the second book in the series and laid it on top of my dream journal as I prepared for bed, intending to read it next. That was all I needed to do to have a profound dream experience, touch the book with intent. Here is the dream I had that night:

I give birth to a girl child although I am not pregnant. In the dream, I go to the bathroom and, sitting on the toilet, I begin to feel and intuit that I am having a baby. At first it feels like a log, like I have a huge log stuck in my vagina. I try to feel with my hand if the baby is in fact down the birth canal or if the cervix is dilated. I move off the toilet after I see blood and go to look in a mirror. In the mirror I see the head has already emerged and so I know for sure that I am giving birth. I also know, from experience, that once the head is out the hard part is over and that the baby will come fast now. I have a moment of panic that it will get stuck like this, halfway out, and that I will have to walk around with a half-birthed baby protruding from my crotch. But in the next instant the baby pushes out. I catch her easily and bring her up to my breast. We bond immediately. She smiles up at me, looks deeply into my eyes, and snuggles against me. I hold her close, knowing that the warmth of our two bodies is enough to keep us safe, even in the coldest of climates.

I remember the book Anastasia at this point in the dream and the title character who contends that a child can survive in the world, even naked, as long as it is held close. I don’t know if she actually says this in the book, but this is what I get in my dream and she herself had survived in the Siberian Taiga through close nurturance and care by animals.

At this point, I take the baby to my parents who are sitting at a cafe table talking to my brother who died. I tell them I have had a baby and I show her to them, but they do not even look at her or show the least bit of interest. They say nothing and just stare blankly, gazing right through me, as if I don’t even exist. My brother looks at me tenderly and shrugs as if to say: “What did you expect?”

I walk away from them and bump into a few other people I know. I am aware that I have dried blood on my legs and that the baby and I are almost naked. I am wearing a short white shift, similar to what Anastasia is described as wearing, and I have the baby wrapped in a shawl. The people I meet acknowledge her, but only in uneasy glances. She is not well received or given any attention. I accept this, even though at first I am puzzled by the lack of interest, because I am having a most amazing experience, full of insight and intuition and I feel totally calm and at peace with this baby in my arms. I also know that she belongs only to me, that she is my responsibility and that I do not really need acknowledgement from others.

The details of the dream get fuzzy at this point, but the child grows almost immediately into a small thin creature, more doll like than human. I watch her running and skipping around. She can talk from the moment of birth like a well educated, spiritually evolved adult, full of wisdom and insight. I know that I must watch her carefully, not let her stray too far from me, and that I must keep her warm so that she not only survives, but also thrives.

As time goes on, I realize I have been forgetting about her more and more, that I forget to warm her against my body, that I am neglectful of her. When I notice she is looking cold I grab her, hold her against me and apologize for my lack of attention, but then I let her go again. At one point I see her lying in the shawl on the ground, not moving, and when I pick her up I see that she has dried up and that her right arm has cracked and broken off, as if she were made of clay. I feel terrible because I forgot all about her and let her get cold and dehydrated to the point of partially crumbling into dust. I am worried that she is dead. I am aware that I must take better care of her, that I must never forget about her again.

The dog woke me at 5:30 in the morning and I immediately forgot this dream. After I let the dog out I returned to bed, feelings of the significance of the dream staying with me, but still unable to recall it. The only thing I could remember was that I had dreamed of a log. As I lay in bed I felt a heavy feeling, almost a soreness in my pelvic floor. I heard a voice say: “Do a Kegel exercise,” which any woman knows is an exercise to strengthen the pelvic floor muscles, especially recommended after giving birth. As soon as I squeezed the muscles I immediately recalled the dream. I had indeed felt like I had given birth in the night and my body held the memory of it until I recaptured it! From that point on the dream reemerged and as the day went on more details became clearer.

Immediately I noted the significance of having set the intent to read the second in that magical book series. I won’t go into details, but the series is based on the experiences of a Russian man who, in 1995, meets a woman, Anastasia, living in the forests of Siberia. She is energetically alive and evolved. His experiences in her company remind me of Carlos Castaneda’s experiences in the company of don Juan, and of my own experiences with Jeanne. Anastasia tells him things that he cannot imagine ever happening and yet they do, similar to my own experiences with Jeanne. Anastasia is directly connected to and channels energy and insight related to the planet and the environment. Whenever I have asked Jeanne questions about the environment, she has always stated that there are other soul groups working on that and that it is not her expertise. Jeanne is connected to a soul group that is involved with soul advancement. This distinction struck me, as I read the first book and thought that perhaps Anastasia is connected to this environmentally concerned soul group energy.

Anyway, that was my first insight as my dream unfolded, that I had set the intent. The second insight I got was that this dream was about my personal transformation. When I recapitulated my childhood, when my abuser did in fact molest me with wooden objects, I rid them from my body as I relived each memory. In the dream, perhaps I feared that this was just another wooden object, another memory to be removed, but then I see life, a real baby instead of a log. I see this as indicative of the transformational process; having released the trauma I can now allow myself to give birth to new life within myself.

When I attempted to show the child to my parents and other acquaintances neither it nor my transformational process was given any attention. In every attempt to introduce this innocent child to the world, the old world, there was no resonance. My personal experiences did not matter in that world. I received the insight that I must further detach from that old world now and more fully embrace this new world that the child represents. Anastasia’s story influenced my dream experience: I knew that the child must be nurtured to thrive. It was pretty clear and simple. All I had to do is keep her with me at all times. I am enough; I am all she needs.

However, I seemed to still need reminding of something, some piece was missing, because every time I laid the child aside, apart from my physical body, something happened to her. She got cold or brittle, and eventually dried up. When I discovered her all dried up and with a broken arm, I immediately felt deep remorse, regret, sadness and extremely guilty for leaving her to fend for herself. I realized that I had not been doing something right. I was killing her by forgetting about her. In the dream, I instinctively knew that I had to keep her close to me, that we did not need anything else, we were enough; that we were done with the old world, had already left it behind. We had already done the work of transformation. I was reminded, as I picked up the broken child in the end of the dream and held her close once again, that she is my innocent self, and that I must stay connected to her at all times, not just when I feel like it. I must remember that this is what my wholeness feels like, and yes, that I am enough. I also knew that if I stayed connected, bonded with her, that everything else would take care of itself, that life would unfold, as it should.

As the day went on and this dream stayed with me, I received a final insight. Pictures of the Virgin Mary holding the Christ child kept popping into my head, paintings from my art history books that I’d studied a long time ago. Each time one of these paintings came to me, I re-experienced holding that child in my arms in the dream, nestling against my chest, snuggling in, totally trusting me, totally calm, knowing that she was exactly where she belonged. As I re-experienced these feelings throughout the day—utter calmness, contentment, wholeness—I saw the significance of these paintings; virgin and child, maturity and innocence; appropriate symbols of giving birth to the Self and to true spirit innocence, which, in my case, I worked so hard to reunite with and nurture into life during my years of recapitulating my traumatic childhood, a time when I was mostly concerned with simply surviving. With this insight I now clearly understand the symbolism of the Virgin Mary and Christ Child as Whole-Self, complete. I had gotten it right, finally the missing piece was found.

We are all the Virgin and we are all the Christ Child in her arms. No matter if we are male or female, we are all totally capable of giving birth to the total Self. This is not the wounded child self, but Christ as innocence within, Self and God-Self fully merged. I know I must not be afraid to embrace this wholeness. I must not put her aside again or depart from the path. I must stay connected to this magic within. I know she was not damaged throughout the whole childhood journey; she remained whole, waiting for me to reconnect.

I know how hard it is to stay connected to this spirit self at all times. We must all deal with the reality of our lives and remain connected to this world, but I also know that the magic is available to us, reminding us that this is really the biggest challenge, to keep turning toward it. Once we have connected to the magic of our true spirit self, whether through our experiences, dreams, processes of inner work, through our intent to change, or through the books we elect to read, our challenge then becomes to never put it aside again, but to hold our experiences as close as a child in our arms, remembering why we are here and what we are really seeking. The magic is really inside each one of us.

I humbly offer these intent-dream-book-insight-magical experiences as we enter a new phase of winter magic. Happy Holidays! May they be magically meaningful, personally, by intent.

If you wish, feel free to share or comment in the Post Comment section below.

Sending you all love and good wishes,
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Lessons Learned

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While I diligently and with a dogged sense of purpose went about a shamanic process of recapitulation of my earliest years, I was often presented with experiences in other worlds. In the beginning, I was more or less thrown unwittingly into many experiences that I could neither explain nor fathom; they were so otherworldly at times that I often came away from them steeped in both awe and fear. But all I really had to do was take them to my weekly shamanic sessions with Chuck and he would very soberly and kindly explain my experiences in the pragmatic terms of the world of the seers of ancient Mexico. As time went on, and I learned more about the seer’s world, I volitionally entered into experiences in an effort to gain greater clarity of my personal journey but also to more fully understand how the seer’s world could work for me in everyday life. In fact, I began to develop a hunger for the magic that I thought I could only find within that world.

Perhaps the biggest magic that I engaged and cultivated was the connection I developed with Jeanne. She was present from the onset of my recapitulation journey, though I was not fully aware of the reason why. I learned to trust her guidance implicitly. As I ventured into recapitulation and into experiences that could only be described as paranormal, she kept me very anchored in this world, always pressuring me to stay grounded and focused on taking life one step at a time.

In the channeling blog on Monday I introduced six practical steps that Jeanne stressed to me over and over again as I went through my recapitulation process. I think they are still some of the simplest and most useful steps in living a life of grounded awareness. Her advice was often not that profound, things I intuitively knew, but when in the midst of crisis or when undergoing the stresses of personal transformation her words often seemed like manna from heaven.

I repeat here the six practical steps I mentioned previously and then offer a few more:

1. Stay in form (good physical shape).

2. Rest.

3. Allow for flow and take one step at a time.

4. Stop thinking so much.

5. Everything will work out the way it’s supposed to.

6. Learn detachment.

One day, while trying to get my bearings around some issues that just seemed too overwhelming to handle, including my car that needed some work, I pleaded with Jeanne to help me. She suggested, very pragmatically, that I make a plan. Here are her words:

“Make a plan to deal with your problems, even if it doesn’t feel like a complete and right plan, just begin the first step and it will begin to take on a life of its own, but nothing will happen if you ignore the problems. They won’t go away nor will they change. They will sit there like the car in your driveway, like a big gray elephant that you know you have to take care of. Deal with it. The longer it sits there, the more energy drains from you because of it.”

She told me to stop pushing myself so hard, to stop overworking to the point of exhaustion and she told me to breathe:

“Remember your breath. It sustains you and you know how important it is. Find your breath and move the tiredness out of your body with each exhale and bring in new energy and life with each inhale.”

She also stressed that dreamtime was as significant as waking time:

“You need to keep your dream paths open for more productive dreaming. That’s why you are so tired today, you didn’t rest last night, your problems fed and leached into your dream paths, stealing away your time of peace. Don’t let this happen. Your dreamtime is as important as your waking time.”

In reference to the above statement about dreamtime she also said:

“Pass this on. This is another chore I am giving you in this time of indecision: to pass along the things I tell you in order to keep open your channels, night and day.”

“Take care of yourself by dealing with the difficulties that arise in your life,” she went on to say, “and do it all in a calm and steady, one-step at a time manner. The answers will come to you. You don’t even need to try that hard. Do what seems natural—the thing that comes to you in a calm moment. Slow down and things will begin to happen.”

She told me to stop trying so hard to figure my life out, but to just flow with it, that it was already laid out for me, I just had to learn to acquiesce to the unfolding of it.

“I’m not giving you riddles,” she said. “The only riddle is being able to recognize what is right before you.”

She was right you know; everything was already laid out. In moments of deep meditation and recapitulation and during many Embodyment Therapy sessions, I saw everything laid out. I saw the past, already done, laid out in ancient times, as was the future too, long before I ever existed. I saw this future, my current life, though it seemed but a dream, and I even saw beyond this time. I saw paintings I had yet to paint, I saw books I had yet to write. I saw people I had yet to meet, and I saw lives I had yet to live. Some of those paintings, forgotten in the split second that I glimpsed them, did get painted and some of the books have been and are being written. At that moment of insight, I knew I just had to choose to live out what was before me. I had to choose life!

I have met many new people in my new life and even though I have gone on to become a purveyor of advice myself sometimes, I still pay attention to the words of guidance that I received from Jeanne when I felt like I was drowning in crisis after crisis. In quiet moments of calm, I know that they are still, in their simplicity and practicality, some of the soundest words of advice I have ever heard. And they work in the seer’s world too, for really that is where they come from.

I offer these words of guidance, because, as Jeanne told me back then, this was going to be one of my jobs, to pass on what I learned. I most humbly accepted the challenge she laid down before me, first to finish recapitulating my early traumas and then to keep doing my inner work so that I could always be open and available to not only be her partner, but to fully live life as it was presented and to accept my place in a world that is indeed quite magical!

If you wish, feel free to share or comment in the Post Comment section below.

Sending you all love and good wishes,
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Why Recapitulate?

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I’m going to get personal here, because I can only really talk about my own experiences with any authority. When I was a child I was viciously molested and raped by a man in my neighborhood. This abuse lasted the better part of sixteen years, mostly when I was very young, starting at age two until about age ten, but then intermittently until I graduated from high school and left home at eighteen to go to college. How could this happen, you might ask? How could parents, relatives and teachers not know what was happening? Did she not tell anyone? These are questions that I confronted over and over again as I recapitulated this segment of my life in a three year period beginning in 2001. Today, I specifically address the above questions because I know that anyone who has suffered abuse, sexual or otherwise, must also confront these questions.

I came from a family that was set up to ignore and deny even the possibility of such abuse. Perhaps most families are this way. My mother, a deeply depressed and angry woman, could not abide feelings of any kind. Perfection in everything was demanded and expected, nothing was allowed to ripple the surface of that perfection, no weakness within the family structure that she had created was allowed. If dissonance, conflict, trouble, or even emotion of any kind appeared it was quickly shut down, pushed away, swiftly disposed of, disappearing from sight and memory. My father, a deeply sensitive and deeply fearful man went along with this family structure. He spent his feelings elsewhere in giving time and energy to a long list of public service organizations, to other children and families in dire circumstances, to the poor, the depressed, the mentally ill. Within our own family everything was perfect, no sign of discontent, no sign of weakness, no sign of despair was allowed to leak out, the walls were solidly built and the entryways blocked. As a child, I quickly learned that this was how I too was supposed to construct myself, with strong barriers, not letting anything out, but also not letting anything in. This was, I believe, how the abuse I suffered could take place and my parents not “know about it,” because they chose not to. It didn’t fit into the world they decided upon, created and lived by.

I was seen as and indeed was an extremely shy child. This characterization never left me; it followed me into adulthood. The abuse, starting at such a young age, coincided with my emerging personality and perhaps created this withdrawn child self, but also the strict requirements of behavior upheld at home left little room for a true child self to evolve outwardly. The lessons and structures learned there fit well into the outside world, into the Catholic school I attended where we were taught how sinful it was to think about the self in any way, that selflessness was the most important of virtues, so how could I dare to speak about myself? My problems were nothing compared to other children in the world. Basically, I learned to maneuver through life according to the rules and demands of the authority figures in my life. I acquiesced and took the journey that was presented to me, with few options and little energy to do otherwise, so intent was I on keeping myself safe and protected no matter where I went.

My abuser groomed me from a very young age. In the beginning the abuse was made to seem like games, strange games, often painful games, but over several years they became part of a process, unfolding in a different world from that of my closed family world; however, the requirements of those two worlds were really not that different. I went from one secret world, where obedience and absolute allegiance were required to the other where the same structures were in place. I learned, over time and through hard won lessons, how to seamlessly maneuver within and between these two worlds, and as a result they rarely intersected. On occasion, when they did threaten to collide, I found the means to contain and protect myself, to keep myself safe, by dissociating, by turning to new worlds of my own in creativity and imagination. I sensed the ever-present potency of mental disintegration, but I avoided it the same way I had been taught to avoid any feelings or emotions; I shut it down, pushed it away, and carried on, withdrawing from that which threatened to trigger it.

In essence, I learned what my parents taught me. You don’t speak about yourself, your feelings, your problems. Instead you get depressed, you harden yourself, you get busy and spend your energy on others, but above all you never crack, you never let anyone see that there is anything wrong with you. It was perhaps the biggest and best lesson I could have learned at the time. In essence, the parents I received gave me the lessons I most needed at the time in order to survive, but in so doing I was also perpetuating a lot of secrets and lies, having to live out rules and mental constructs that did not really belong to me. I had to uphold my parent’s world. And even though, for a long time, it worked for me, one day I could no longer bear the burden of it. I could no longer carry forth the long held secrets, my own or theirs, and that was the day I knew I had to recapitulate that part of my life. It had ruled me for too long and I wanted to be free of it.

That was the original intent of my recapitulation, to set myself free of what did not belong to me and from what I had kept pushed down inside me for so long. I finally decided, consciously or unconsciously or a little of both, that it was time to let the child self speak about what had happened to her, to offer her the words to say what she could not even begin to fathom. She needed an adult to put into words the horrific events of her life, to make sense of them and to break the long held silent pacts that had been established before she even knew she existed, the pacts set in place by the adults in her life.

To me, this became the impetus that sent me on an awakening journey, an awakening that had been triggered many times, on many occasions in the past, but that I had to be in alignment with in order to truly begin to confront the lies, the secrets, the structures of a world that was not really the world I wanted to live in. The recapitulating of those early years of my life was a most painful journey and I admire anyone who dares to step into the mire of their past and confront the petty tyrants and fearful demons who stand blocking life from unfolding as it truly can.

I know what it means to feel now, to feel not only emotionally but physically everything that happened and happens to me. But I also know the liberating feelings of freedom from that which does not truly belong to me. I know what it means to embrace my truths, my desires, my needs, and my perceptions of a new world, under my terms. I know what it feels like to wake up every day knowing that I conquered the past, knowing that I won all the battles this time, on my terms, in my way, using inner work; truth and honesty my only weapons.

I discovered another thing as I undertook the recapitulation adventure of those early years of my life. I discovered a spiritual core that was as indestructible and strong as I always knew it was, the core that kept me whole and safe, even as I took a most disheartening and painful childhood journey. I rediscovered what it was that kept me alive and sane all those years. It was myself. It was myself finally freed of everything that had been imposed, and once reunited with that true self the adventure took on a momentum of its own. It has not stopped even though I still must recapitulate what comes to greet me on a daily basis. But honestly, that childhood past is done. It is solidly placed in the context of who I am and where I am going now. Now is all that matters, but I would not be present, facing oncoming time, NOW, if I had not dared to face the past and free myself of it.

I offer this essay today to all of you who are taking the first steps into the journey of recapitulation, to those who are well into it, and to those who fear venturing inward. I can only stress again, in so doing you will become free. You will become YOU. It’s a pretty great place to be!

If you wish, feel free to share or comment in the Post Comment section below.

Sending you all love and good wishes,
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Unblocking Energy

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Back when I was doing my recapitulation Jeanne told me that if I did not find a way to speak about what had happened to me during childhood the long hidden secrets would putrefy inside me. I’d already had proof of this with intermittent pains and illnesses with no medical explanation, skin problems, and cancer. Don Juan explained to Carlos that the purpose of recapitulation consisted of:

“…a systematic scrutiny of one’s life, segment by segment, an examination made not in the light of criticism or finding flaw, but in the light of an effort to understand one’s life, and to change its course. Don Juan’s claim was that once any practitioner has viewed his life in the detached manner that the recapitulation requires, there’s no way to go back to the same life.” —from The Wheel of Time, page 4.

The process of recapitulation consists in learning how to release blocked energy to achieve the detachment that allows us to fully accept and experience new life. Once again, near the end of my recapitulation, Jeanne reminded me of the need to continually release all energy blockages. As I began to take on the job of becoming her channel she warned that if I did not find a way to speak about her, and what I was learning from her, that everything would begin to pile up inside me again, creating new blockages, and eventually I would die.

At that point, I had a dream in which I was feeling the fullness of being Jeanne’s channel and I wanted to make sure that everyone knew that my intent was pure, that I had pureness of heart. In this dream I was confronted with a stadium filled with hecklers who, no matter what I said, would not listen to me as I tried to explain that I was a good person and I was only doing this because it was the right thing to do. Jeanne told me that I had to let my feelings go, that in feeling that I was not being appreciated for my simplicity, my goodness, that I was not listened to and ended up feeling ignored and insignificant, that I was in fact expressing self-importance. She said that no matter how justified and right I felt it did not matter. The only thing that mattered was taking the journey. She was challenging me to take the journey with her more fully. Was I ready to do it, to leave everything behind and go with her into a new world?

In taking the journey, by accepting every challenge as a challenge to let go of my ego, I discovered that most of my blockages were bundled up in self-importance. In order to truly release blocked energy and access my own vital stores of energy I had to get to a place where nothing mattered because nothing had any significance. I had to totally detach from everything that my ego previously felt was important, even the importance of being good, right, or pure of heart. As don Juan taught, in learning detachment—non-attachment to the structures of this world, including feelings of self-importance—we gain the means of shifting our perceptions and evolving.

I finally understood what Jeanne had been telling me all along: if I allowed blockages to remain inside me they would continue to eat up my energy and I would eventually rot away, just an empty carcass. I also knew that either way I was facing death. It is a known fact that we are all going to die, but now I was being asked to make a decision in how I wanted to face my death. Did I want to stay attached to the old self, so known and full of pain, or would I choose to let her go and open up to something totally fresh and new? I was headed the same place no matter what I decided. “Are you taking this journey with me, Jan?” she asked. “Or are you going to stay attached to self-importance?”

I finally understood that in giving up the ego I could become free. “I get it,” I said, “when you can accept death you are free.” How simple that statement sounds! We already possess the knowledge that death is inevitable, but we can change our perception of death by constantly finding new energy: by doing recapitulation, by breathing out old stuff, by releasing energy blockages. We can choose to give ourselves new energy and in so doing free ourselves from the fear of death, removing its dark shadow from our lives. When we allow ourselves to let the true journey begin, death no longer matters either, just as ego no longer matters.

Once I sat and did the recapitulation breath during a thunderstorm, aware that the energy of it was powerful and that if I could tap into it I might be able to create a shift. I sat for a long time and did the sweeping breath, moving my head to the right and then the left, breathing in and out slowly and methodically as I swept my head back and forth, simultaneously going deeper and deeper into myself. I breathed out the energy of my abuser, even the smell and taste of tobacco smoke that appeared, cleaning my nose and lungs of the memory of him, unblocking my body of everything else that arose to get in my way as the storm raged outside the windows, as the lightning flashed and the thunder shook. I went further and further back into the past and beyond, until I became an old Indian woman sitting under a thick and roughly woven blanket on a precipice of a high mesa overlooking a desert landscape as a thunderstorm raged and cracked all around me. As I did the breathing I was letting go of all the dark secrets, breathing out the energy of my abuser, sending him away and replacing his energy with my own, going deeper and deeper as I cleared a path to my truth, into what I had stored inside me, until I was able to leave this world and enter another.

As I took that recapitulation journey that day the energy was very much like the energy of this day, the energy of the storm that now rages outside my windows much the same as that thunderstorm, the wind offering a similar power. With awareness of energy, of our personal energy and why and where it is blocked inside us, in learning how to release ourselves from the past, we become available for experiences of energy as it flows in the universe, as I was that day when I did succeed in shifting my world.

With the intent already set to change, we just have to accept the mission set before us. We have to face death, but in so doing we also have to face life. Are you ready to take the journey? Today, with the power inherent in the southerly wind, it may be your moment. Good Luck!

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Sending you all love and good wishes,
Jan