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: Retreat

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Dear Fellow Travelers,

As we begin this holiday season tomorrow, with Thanksgiving, Chuck and I go into retreat, giving our energy a rest from outward flow, pulling inward to our reserves, seeking replenishment and rejuvenation.

When I first started channeling Jeanne after she left this world, she showed me, in visions of her new life, a room that she retreated to quite often to replenish her energy. I understood that this was a most necessary requirement or she would not have enough energy to keep evolving. If she failed to give herself respite her energy would simply drain away and she would be of no help to anyone.

I also understood that this respite was something we must learn to give ourselves while we are still alive on this earth, that we must learn how to slow down and be grateful for the energy we have, learn to treat ourselves with respect and tenderness, learn to give to ourselves. This is not a selfish act, but in fact the most unselfish act that we as humans can undertake. If we can fully accept that we are energetic beings while in this world, we open up to understanding how our energy affects everyone and everything around us. This is also true of the people we choose to surround ourselves with; their energy effects us. If we are to be good energetic citizens of the world we must take time to contemplate how we effect and are effected by the people and world we choose to live in.

In essence, if we take care of our energetic selves, if we can allow ourselves some days of retreat from the structures, rituals and demands of the outer world and pay attention to the calls of the inner world, we begin to energetically change the world, first within the confines of our own lives and then beyond. We find that the people in our lives become energetically compatible, and eventually our energy is more easily replenished. We find it much easier to find that inner room that Jeanne so readily enters for her personal energy, our own personal inner room.

So we extend our thanks to all of you who so faithfully read our words and at the same time we pull back from writing our blogs for a few days, to retreat from the routine, to experience nature at this time of year, to be calm and at peace as we journey inward and experience energy. Jeanne and I will return on Monday November 29, 2010 with a new channeled message of energetic guidance and Chuck will return on Saturday December 4, 2010 with a new blog in Chuck’s Place.

Until then, in energy, we retreat and we give,
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Surrendering to Healing

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At 4:45 this morning fierce winds knocked down two of our large pines sending one to the ground shaking and groaning as it fell and the other into our house. For about 15 minutes it sounded as if the house itself were about to fall. I actually shouted to Chuck: “The house is going!” In actuality it was the second pine falling onto the roof. The force of the fall as it hit the roof broke its eight-foot crown right off and sent it sailing over the peak of the house. “We’re in the Wizard of Oz!” Chuck said, as it landed with a shattering crash onto the deck right outside our bedroom. “Oh my god! There’s a pine tree on the deck! Where the heck did that come from?” I wondered. “We don’t have any pines near the deck.”

My daughter, who was asleep upstairs, came running downstairs as the first pine tree crashed past her window and just as the other punctured the roof a few feet from her bed. Opening the front door we saw the extent of the damage and even in the dark we could see that it looked pretty bad. The two tall pines, 80-100 feet high, which we always suspected of being vulnerable to the kinds of winds we get up on our little hill lay sprawled out, their roots yanked from the ground, huge holes exposing the earth that had been their home for the past 40 years.

Those trees were also resting and nesting places for numerous birds and they have been flying around in frantic disbelief all morning. It’s still quite windy as I write this and I’m a little worried that the last pine too will topple onto the house. About 5 years ago the fourth one went down in a similar windstorm, though it fell away from the house taking out the electric box as it went. We are lucky that the side of the house that was damaged this morning does not house any wires or lines of importance, so I sit comfortably enough inside at my computer, though if it rains again we fear more damage. The insurance company has been called and the first project is to get the tree off the house. I’m waiting for my neighbor, a tree man, to come and take a look.

I had planned to write about the process of recapitulation again today, with the idea of acquiescence uppermost in my mind. I am not surprised to be dealing with the loss of the presence of these two powerful trees for they are showing us something that we as humans have such a hard time with: letting ourselves fall.

As I neared the end of my recapitulation journey I had a powerful dream that signified for me why it had been so important to learn how to acquiesce to the process of that journey. In the dream I was preparing to meet my adversary, a huge space age monster, as big as a building, made of solid gleaming metal equipped with weapons of all kinds. I was dressed in a tattered padded dress with a tool belt tied around my waist that did not have any tools in it, but I knew I did not need weapons. The only things I needed were inner calm, balance, perseverance, the ability to remain in total alignment with the inner self and the ability to shift at the right moment. During the course of the dream I outwitted the terrible monster simply by remaining aware and alert. With utter calmness and balance I simply shifted out of his way, incrementally moving at exactly the right moment into the right position as I watched him repeatedly lunge at me and fall to the ground, his bulk no match for my agile accuracy.

From this dream I understood that during the process of my recapitulation I had learned not only how to successfully fight off an old monster from the past but that I had also won the battle against resistance to change. To begin with, I had to learn that I couldn’t move on in my life until I learned that things could change. That was the first big insight, and the second was as simple as surrendering to healing, yet it was the hardest thing I had ever done. I had to fall, like those two pines, in order for things to change and for eventual healing to happen.

This is what we must all do, surrender to the journey of confrontation with the inner demons and find the path to healing. The inner demons may not be fully known until we allow for change and even the path may not always be clear at times either. But with perseverance, by staying connected to the personal inner journey, the path undoubtedly reappears when we most need it. And it is indeed a path of surrender, first to the most apparent truths of the self and then to the most hidden ones as well. We can learn to accept the journey as one of healing, even as we struggle daily with what comes to awaken us to the deeper self, by surrendering to the natural process of our personal recapitulation.

Chuck and I have both loved those pine trees for the shade and privacy they gave us and known that some day they would have to come down. We were not yet ready to lose them, but now we are forced to face what the loss of them means. We must prepare for a new look to our front yard and get used to a new kind of exposure. We will get more sunlight into the house, but we will feel the heat in the summer as well. I think the recapitulation lesson here is that like the pine trees falling in the wind, sometimes our recapitulation comes to greet us unexpectedly, in abrupt and forceful ways. Sometimes we do not have a choice. Sometimes we must acquiesce to nature’s will and fall in the wind. Sometimes the power of nature, inside or outside of us, is all we need in order to surrender to the healing journey.

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: Gazing at the Golden Monk

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“I would like to experience energy as it flows in the universe.” Yesterday I set this intent, asking both Jeanne and don Juan to hear me, and then promptly forgot about it. I then went about my morning yoga practice and afterwards sat down to meditate for a few minutes before jumping into the day.

I faced the backyard, sitting on my pillow in front of the sliding glass door, as is my preference; looking out into the gray, overcast morning. The leaves are gone from the trees now and the branches of the large catalpa tree are but gray sticks crisscrossing in an intricate pattern. I noticed a pentagram shape formed by two large branches and several smaller branches and in the center of this pentagram a nice triangle at eye level. This is where I chose to focus my gaze. I did my usual breathing to clear my thoughts and bring my attention inward. Then I let my gaze soften, holding it on the small triangular shape in the middle of the pentagram.

Gently breathing in and out and continuing to clear my head of interruptions by repeating the mantra I’ve given myself—”I detach” on the in-breath and “I intend” on the out-breath—I continued to soften my gaze. (This is a shortened version of a mantra I’ve been saying for a couple of months now as I meditate. The longer version, which captures the spirit of my original intent, is: “I detach from the structures of this world and I intend a new world.” But having set that intent a long time ago I now simply say the shorter, equally effective mantra, shutting out the world as I do so. So far it’s worked really well.)

Softening my gaze, keeping it focused on the triangle in the tree, the world and the branches began to blur. In a few minutes I noticed a golden glow beginning to emanate from the now blurry triangle. It took on the shape of a human torso, as if a golden statue were standing there, radiating golden light. There was no head and no legs, just a simple torso; neck, shoulders, chest, waist, and arms with hands clasped in front at the lower abdominal area, looking rather monkish.

As I gazed at this golden monk I heard a soft voice saying: “Let your gaze soften, just stay with it.” I followed the instructions and watched as the golden glow extended outward from the torso, filling the tree and the entire back yard with vertically flowing waves of golden light. Suddenly, the backyard was no longer dark and gray but instead full of trees with golden leaves and bright light, and everything was vibrating. I held it as long as I could, until my mind popped back in and questioned: “Is that the sun shining?” I lost the gaze and came back into this world. There I was looking out at the gray tangle of branches, the world as dark and overcast as it was when I’d started.

“What the heck was that?” I wondered. Then I heard that soft voice again saying: “You can find it again. Go ahead, do it again.” Once again, following instructions, I gazed at the triangle of branches. Immediately the golden torso returned and began to glow. I lost it. I snapped back to this world again, to the gray and overcast morning as my mind interrupted the experience with logic and doubt.

I heard the voice again: “Go ahead, do it again, just gaze.” I suspended all judgment and did it again. The golden monk returned, I held my gaze slightly longer and then lost it again. The voice returned, instructing me each time I lost my gaze to keep practicing.

“Do it again. That’s right; hold it as long as you can. Let your mind go,” it instructed, “just have the experience.”

I did this six or eight times in a row. One more time I was able to hold it long enough for the back yard to fill with the golden waves of vibrating light, for the trees to become clothed in golden leaves, to see the vertical flow of energy before it all snapped back to the overcast and dull morning that it really was, in this world. This world looked asleep and dead, but I saw it as totally energetically alive.

As I practiced I understood two things. One, that this was what the seers of ancient Mexico did when they sat and gazed. They held the experience for as long as possible, but then, rather than getting caught in the amazement or the doubt of the experience they simply did it again and again, training themselves to see energy as it flows in the universe, volitionally. Persistence is the key. Here I learned the value of repetition as Chuck wrote about in his blog the other day.

The other thing I understood was that by setting my intent and having forgotten I had done so, I called infinity to me. And infinity came! I could have brushed all this away as just my vivid imagination, dismissed it, but I chose instead to stay with it, to value it for the experience alone. By paying attention to that quiet voice telling me to try again and again, I got beyond the possibility of seeing energy to accepting the truth of it. This was my experience of learning to see energy as it flows in the universe, volitionally.

I learned that by setting my intent, letting it go, doing my practice—which included repeating my mantra, paying attention to what was placed in front of me, shutting down the internal dialogue, and listening to the guidance—I could have a shamanic experience with the golden monk and whoever else that was who was whispering so gently yet so convincingly in my ear.

I humbly offer this practice and these experiences of meditation, intent, and repetition so that others may find the courage to go have their own moments of seeing energy as it flows in the universe; in whatever way it comes, learning to trust the personal experiences. Oh, and by the way, enjoy them fully for just that: personal experiences of seeing energy!

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

Sending you all love and good wishes for good energy experiences,
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Recapitulation & The Blueprint

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Unsure of what to write about today, I opened The Wheel of Time by Carlos Castaneda, a great resource, full of quotes from his books about his thirteen-year apprenticeship with don Juan Matus. I knew I wanted to continue writing about recapitulation, that most important aspect of a shamanic journey, the one that starts us on our true journey when we are ready to take it. Here is the first quote I read on the left hand side of the pages I opened to, excerpted from The Second Ring of Power:

The warrior’s way offers a man a new life and that life has to be completely new. He can’t bring to that new life his ugly old ways.

On the right hand page I found this quote, also from The Second Ring of Power:

Warriors always take a first event of any series as the blueprint or the map of what is going to develop for them subsequently.

Both of these quotes are right in line with embarking on a recapitulation journey, as from the first step we are invited to leave our old ways behind and begin not only a new journey but a new way of perceiving and interpreting the world we live in, as well as the world we are leaving behind, while preparing for the world we are about to enter. Because, in essence, a recapitulation journey requires that we leave behind our old selves, shedding them like well worn rags, no longer useful in the new world we are entering. In fact, our old selves, our old voices, and our old ways just don’t seem to fit in that new world, no matter how hard we might try to make them. Eventually we learn that we must totally acquiesce to that new world and find new means of behaving, thinking, and seeing, for without acquiescing we will never fully emerge from the old world and never fully enter the new one, but remain caught somewhere in between, and that is quite a challenging place to be.

During my recapitulation journey I spent many weeks caught between those two worlds as I struggled to make sense of where I was. In finally discovering the meaning of the event that led me into that between-worlds place, in accepting the “blueprint,” as Carlos writes in the above quote, the blueprint itself became clearer. In acquiescing to the inevitable unfolding of the events that would lead me out of that between-worlds state and into the new world, I began to see the greater meaning of my past but also my future. Each blueprint, each series of recapitulation events, became another step forward, allowing me to break through the murky past now made clear and into the present moment, also made clear by the process of recapitulation and learning to see the world differently.

At one point, towards the end of my intensive three year recapitulation, I was aware that I was going to have to reach, yet again, another breaking point, but this time I knew it would be the final one. How I knew this I don’t really know, except to say that I saw the blueprint and knew I just had to await the unfolding of the process. In essence, I understood, because of all the other series of unfolding blueprints that I had already experienced, that it was already laid out and I just had to acquiesce to taking this final leg of my long and arduous journey. Here is a description of the event that precipitated that final breaking point.

I was taking a walk along a path in the woods, slowly strolling along in the shade of the trees on a hot and humid day. At one point I tripped over a root and suddenly lost sight of the path. For a split second it disappeared, and even though I had been on that path a hundred times and knew every root and turn I suddenly became disoriented. In that second of disorientation, a curtain ripped open in the universe and, in the momentum of that trip over the root, I fell through that curtain into nothingness, suddenly lost, fearful and almost panicking. Then I took another step, regained my balance, and seemed to be back on the familiar path again, but everything had changed. I felt like I was now in a dream world.

From having already experienced many such shamanic twists of reality during my recapitulation I was fully aware that something was happening out of the ordinary. I saw it for what it was, a glitch in the universe. It was as if I was looking at everything from a slightly different angle and I couldn’t shake it back into normality again; try as I might. I had inadvertently, without having a choice in the matter, walked right through that glitch into another world and everything had changed.

This was the first time I did not have a choice in the matter, because there had been many other times when I saw the curtain ripping open and was offered the choice of going through it or not, but this was different. This time I was going whether I wanted to or not and that was how I knew I was going to have some pretty bizarre experiences in the days to come. This was the moment of the blueprint.

Whatever the glitch meant, I took it as a gift, thanking infinity for showing me that things could change in an instant, when I least anticipated them, and for pointing out to me not to expect things to always stay the same; even the familiar becomes unfamiliar in the blink of an eye. I knew from that moment on to expect the unexpected.

As I continued walking that day, I immediately recapitulated the moment when I had tripped over the root. I wondered what I had been thinking about when it happened. I also questioned my feelings of fear and panic, wondering if they were related to my past. I had been abused in the woods as a child and I wondered if a memory was being presented to me of something that had happened to me a long time ago in another woods. I also reestablished with my psyche that I was ready to confront whatever came to greet me because I was determined to stick with my recapitulation process, to keep making progress towards a new life. As in the first quote from The Wheel of Time that I present today: I knew my new life had to be completely new, and totally free of everything that represented the old me.

As I recapitulated that moment I realized I had been thinking about some press releases I’d been writing when I suddenly thought: “Don’t! Not now! Don’t think of work; this time is for myself!” I pulled my eyes back from gazing out over the woods and focused down on the path in front of me and that was when I tripped and the curtain wrenched open and I was lost, hurtling in momentary blackness. I felt my heart lurch as if I had suddenly seen something frightening, when all that really happened was that my view of the world before me changed and I became suddenly aware. “Oh,” I thought, “this is awareness; this is having awareness of all that is around me.”

All of a sudden I had utter clarity, I could see everything in glistening sharpness, but it was so unfamiliar that I wanted to shake it away. But try as I might, by shaking my head and trying to clear my sight, I could not. I was caught in heightened awareness, perceiving reality differently for some reason that was as yet unknown. I knew that it was important not to focus on why the event frightened me but instead to find out why the fear still resided inside me. I knew that I was about to embark on another leg of my inner journey and I was ready for it.

What happened subsequent to that event was exactly as I had predicted, I embarked on the final breaking point of my old self, my old ways of thinking, acting, reacting, and being in the world. Over the next month I acquiesced to the culmination of my recapitulation as one event after another occurred, without my say-so, just as laid out in the moment I fell through that curtain. The blueprint for this final phase was that I was going on the journey and I had no choice in the matter.

In another reality I did have a choice in the matter because I had made the decision to begin the recapitulation journey a long time ago. I had already been learning how to accept, how to acquiesce, and how to let go as events unfolded. I had already chosen to change and change I did, sometimes by choice and sometimes without having a say in the matter, but I always knew I was on the journey of a lifetime and I was going to savor every minute of it and accept what came to guide me.

I admit; I was not always so acquiescent. Sometimes I whined and kicked and protested vehemently, but in the end I knew that everything that had happened to me in the past and everything that was happening during my recapitulation was laid out for my benefit and all I had to do was take responsibility for getting myself to the starting point of each event. From there it was just a matter of following the signs and waking up to the truths of who I was, who I had been, and who I had the possibility to become, and sometimes that was just enough to keep me going.

The blueprint of recapitulation events can happen at any moment, especially when we least expect them. As I learned that day when I went for a stroll in the woods and tripped over a root: Expect the unexpected!

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

Sending you all love and good wishes for good recapitulation experiences,
Jan

NOTE: The books mentioned in this blog and other books are available through our Store.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Recapitulation & Walking

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During the summer while strolling around our rural neighborhood with Chuck, in a ten minute span, I related to him three memories in vivid detail, the first sparked by the scent of black locust trees in bloom and each subsequent memory linked by some detail in the previous one. This chain of memories was sparked by what the seers of ancient Mexico would call the usher. In The Active Side of Infinity don Juan instructs Carlos Castaneda to begin the process of recapitulation by walking. Here is what don Juan says to Carlos on page 149:

“Walking is always something that precipitates memories. The sorcerers of ancient Mexico believed that everything we live we store as a sensation on the backs of the legs. They considered the backs of the legs to be the warehouse of man’s personal history. So, let’s go for a walk in the hills now.”

“We walked until it was almost dark,” writes Carlos.

“I think I have made you walk long enough,” don Juan said when we were back at his house, “to have you ready to begin this sorcerer’s maneuver of finding an usher: an event in your life that you will remember with such clarity that it will serve as a spotlight to illuminate everything else in your recapitulation with the same, or comparable, clarity. Do what sorcerers call recapitulating pieces of a puzzle. Something will lead you to remember the event that will serve as your usher.”

In my experience while walking with Chuck the strong smell of the locust blossoms sent me back into a memory that seamlessly led to other memories; the smell of those blossoms was indeed my usher on that occasion. Several years ago while in the midst of my recapitulation I was walking with an acquaintance across a field on a hot summer day when he inadvertently slapped me across my shoulder blades while making a point and although the slap was not particularly hard it immediately sent me into an old memory. Suddenly I was four years old again and walking across a sunny field with the man who had abused me during my childhood. In this state of heightened awareness I was once again a frightened little girl sensing that I was caught in a trap I could not get out of. In one reality I walked next to my acquaintance who, still talking, had no idea that I was no longer truly present but was in fact being presented with an old experience. In fact, I believe the slap across my shoulders, light though it was, actually ushered me into that memory, the force of it just enough to cause a shift of the assemblage point.

Carlos writes often of don Juan slapping him on the back in order to cause a shift in his assemblage point. In The Art of Dreaming he mentions, on pages 15 and 16, the following:

“This was the first time, in my memory, that he deliberately talked about something he had been doing all along: making me enter into some incomprehensible state of awareness that defied my idea of the world and of myself, a state he called the second attention. So, to make my assemblage point shift to a position more suitable to perceiving energy directly, don Juan slapped my back, between my shoulder blades, with such a force that he made me lose my breath.”

Although the blow I received that day while walking with my friend was really just a light tap it was enough to send me off into a dark memory of falling into a black abyss because I was already well into and open to the recapitulation process. In fact, once begun, the memories flew up at me, eagerly asking to be acknowledged, clearly studied and relived, and, finally, truthfully accepted and laid to rest. Carlos also writes in The Active Side of Infinity, on page 160, about the unfolding of his own recapitulation in a similar manner. He states:

“The clarity of the usher brought a new impetus to my recapitulation. A new mood replaced the old one. From then on, I began to recollect events in my life with maddening clarity. It was exactly as if a barrier had been built inside me that had kept me holding rigidly on to meager and unclear memories, and the usher had smashed it. My memory faculty had been for me, prior to that event, a vague way of referring to things that had happened, but which I wanted most of the time to forget.”

In the past I used to get up every morning at 5:30 and run for three miles. I did this for perhaps fifteen or twenty years, but one day I could no longer run. I couldn’t get out of bed and run even one more mile. That signaled the beginning of a new life for me. I learned to walk, and eventually I learned a lot more—things about myself, but things about the world too, not the world I used to see every morning as I ran in the dark, but the world I could not see through the darkness inside myself.

At first I used to walk very fast, still trying to run away from that which sought to catch up with me, all the memories I kept at bay. One day Chuck said to me during one of our shamanic sessions: “Why don’t you stroll? Learn to stroll.” In so saying he pointed out to me my penchant for wanting to always stay one step ahead of the past. In learning to stroll I learned how to slow down so the past could finally catch up with me and teach me what I needed to learn about it.

I had no idea that my own past held such treasures, that my own fears and frightening memories were such gems in disguise. In slowing down, letting them come to me in their own time, greeting them—in the beginning with my resistance and fear and later being open to them—I was able to uncover the jewels hidden inside the black hole of that abyss I saw that day as I walked across a sunny field.

Yes, a slight brush against my shoulders was enough that day to send me into a place I needed to go, just as on that other day last summer the scent of the locusts was enough to lead me to recapitulate, in rapid recall, several other events a lot less remarkable and frightening, but recapitulation nonetheless.

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

Sending you all love and good wishes for good walking experiences,
Jan

NOTE: The books mentioned in this blog and other books are available through our Store.