Life in the Beyond - Journeys Into Enlightenment

On Hiatus until March

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Mon, 1 Feb 2021 16:49:00 -0800

Hello All,

I am into week 4 of a projected 8 week recovery from surgery. I look to be back the beginning of March.

Take care of yourselves. Breathe in Wonder.

With a shared heart,

Janet

Janet Barrett

Life in the Beyond/ Journeys Into Enlightenment

www.janetandbeyond.com

janetb@janetandbeyond.com

Dancing with Oneself, Embraced by All with Janet Barrett

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 08:25:00 -0800

New years generate times of evaluation and orientation---where one is and where one might be going. Today Janet shares with you her ever transcending reality of engaging with BEing, BEing Alive, BEing Present, Oneness, and Wholeness with the Infinite, Divine, and the All as Consciousness.

Check out this episode!

JIE Episode 53 Bog Enjoying Life Is My Choice

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Thu, 7 Jan 2021 12:20:00 -0800

Journeys Into Enlightenment with Janet Podcast

Release January 12, 2021

Episode 53 Blog Enjoying Life is My Choice

For many enjoying life can seem like a nice idea. Nice but not likely. And they can list all their reasons for thinking that. I have experienced many disease patterns that have challenged me to being alive. The following principles have helped me form a now present reality that Life can be and is an enjoyable expression.

1. We are each Consciousness in human form. Each of us is responsible for our choices on the deepest levels as the way Consciousness experiences and expresses itself.

2. Consciousness allows for all. It does not care or judge. Humans care and feel attachment. Consciousness is not attached to outcome.

3. Consciousness celebrates variety. It would be boring if we all looked alike, acted alike, thought alike. We also would have died out a long time ago without our ability to adapt to our geographical environments.

4. Consciousness has a deep, broad sense of humor and tolerance. Humans are highly entertaining.

5. Be willing to explore internally. Making the time to contemplate, meditate, question, ponder, reflect is a gift to oneself. Hindsight is a lovely thing and too late.

6. Embrace the power of your emotions and use them constructively. Sabotage, subversive, explosive are not helpful ways to interact with them.

7. Question everything. Assume nothing. Someone else’s truth is not always your truth no matter the source. Question the source.

8. Think in ways that enrich and do not diminish yourself or others.

9. Accept that you have conscious/unconscious rules in place about Life that decide how you will experience it. How you perceive Life to be is a collection of learnings, trainings, thoughts, experiences formed by perceptual filters. They are also mutable, changeable, and don’t have to be set in stone. You have choice.

10. Value your unique self and realize that you are not any more special than anyone else. We serve differently from one another in many different ways. We cannot know all the different ways. Each of us is important. Each has a place in the totality of the All.

11. Acknowledge that we all live on this pale blue dot called Earth in the middle of the immenseness of the Cosmos and we share it. We can work together, or we can destroy it with the division of selfishness that comes with our sense of separateness from each other.

12. Learn to not judge yourself for what life position you experience. Value your life experiences and place them in a context that enriches you.

13. Realize that when you feel victim to people or events, you feel less than and you learn of helplessness. It can take you to your knees or give you reason to rise up.

14. Feel okay for whatever you are feeling, about anything. Give yourself permission to be real and not apologize for how you feel and think about anything, to anyone. And what you can be feeling in one moment may be different in the next.

15. Focusing on the negative reinforces the negative. Focusing on the positive reinforces the positive. If you are focusing on the positive because you are in reaction to the negative your results are not going to be as successful as if you enjoyed focusing on the positive because you enjoy the positive.

16. Appreciate what you have and don’t have. Hold the gift of awareness and gratitude for what wonders Life has to offer in whatever guise that might be.

17. Being human is a gift. Being alive is a gift. Without our next breath and drink of water we are dead. Life is precious and gone in a heartbeat.

18. We have the power to grow, help, heal, explore, design, destroy, cultivate, enrich, maim, kill, share, violate, forgive and change our minds. We decide.

19. We have the power to engage, retract, to wait or to be still or take action, and knowing when to do any is vital.

20. We are beings who do. Not doers who be.

21.To give is to receive. To receive is to give. Same energy. Both are only labels of the direction of flow from heart centered space.

22.There are rights, there are wrongs and both are only labels. There is black; there is white. Both are only shades of gray.

23. Magic and miracles are common and demonstrate our appreciation for something different and unexpected. They are the potential and the possible as real.

24 There is only the present. Which is already a result of the past. Tomorrow is now.

25. Who you are is part of a story and myth and lineage, and is only that. At times it might feel karmic, predetermined, or out of your control. All of it is only subject to our biases and interpretation and acceptance. All is active and in play writing itself as you speak. DNA is subject to the effects of RNA.

26. We each are the final decider on how we respond to what Life has to offer and share. We each create our reality of life. We are the sum results of our illusions of what we think Life is.

27. We are all Consciousness exploring, Consciousness expanding, Consciousness evolving.

Janet Barrett

Podcast host Journeys Into Enlightenment with Janet

janetandbeyondpodcast@outlook.com

www.janetandbeyond.com

Happy New Year!

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Mon, 4 Jan 2021 11:32:00 -0800

Happy New Year!

Charles Dickens begins A Tale of Two Cities with “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us …” Written in March 1859

Life was not easy in Victorian England. Life is not easy in the modern world today. But it would seem the energies present are not so different almost 150 years later. And probably through out history epoch of societies and civilizations have gone through the same to the observing commentator.

Take the day to let go of the blame, fear, your story of separateness.

Access heart and feel where Wonder is present.

And, for the rest of your day let Awareness of Wonder BE present. Instead of blame, fear, your story of separateness.

Happy New Year!

Janet Barrett

Life in the Beyond/Journeys Into Enlightenment

www.janetandbeyond.com

janetb@janetandbeyond.com

JIE Ep 52 blog/ Let's Do It Again

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Mon, 28 Dec 2020 13:31:00 -0800

Journeys Into Enlightenment with Janet Podcast

Release December 29, 2020

Episode 52 blog/ Let’s Do It Again

It has been frustrating to write a blog for this episode. I haven’t had one clear focus. Both you and I have been enjoying all the portals that Crystal has provided us with as this year comes to an end.

And, end of years are about the year in review and mine is also focused on another remarkable year of this podcast. It has been my delight and saving grace at times. I think I will save that for my first episode in January 2021 that is in a couple of weeks.

With Endings come conclusions. Here are some of mine as we call it a wrap on this year.

The uproar of this last year, in virus, politics and democracy, racial bias and the collapse of so much we take for granted, like the air, shared breath and paychecks. We have all felt under assault and daily routines compromised. Much will never be the same. How do we chose to live together and what it takes for a society to stand in grace and harmony? Maybe it is not important to all. It is to me.

I look to provide a sense of something different for us to experience. Whatever is out there is a reflection of our inner worlds. You know that. How you think forms your sense of reality. The questions we find ourselves shaking our heads about have origins in someone’s thinking and feelings. What version of reality are they living in? Different than mine.

I have seen this year, through the filter of Respect, and unfortunately, too many instances of lack of respect. Rudeness, fear, yelling, the manipulation of truth to convince others who are not in the know, denial, resistance, rebelling, destruction, killing another so often have, at basis, a lack of respect being directed at another. When you value another as yourself it is different than when you don’t. We are each entitled to our opinions we may say but maybe that is not saying enough. We each are entitled to our opinions with respect for our differences and similarities. I might not agree with them but you have value to society. Even those we don’t agree with have some sort of value, either as lesson or as one to emulate.

We are spectrum-based lifeforms or we would all be the same and we are individuals as humans, human but not the same.

We call it basic decency. Treat others as you would like to be treated. Pretty simple. When we don’t hold ourselves with respect, with worthiness, how can we offer it to others?

We hopefully have come to realize our connectedness with all around us. Oneness is real. Social distancing has made everyone aware of our shared breath and how powerful we each are. We can make sick and even kill each other just be breathing on them. Our emotional maturity seems at play. Many people are unaware of how they affect other.

Respect can be as simple as passing another person on the street and you are not wearing a mask while they are. You are unaware of their internal conversation. They are thinking, “I don’t know you, you don’t know me, but I am feeling disrespected by your actions.” You may be secure in your world view of reality, but their reality may allow of them to feel ill effects and have a different relationship to the virus. They have worry where you have denial or apathy running.

As Consciousness we are beyond all that. We appreciate the humanity present and realize it’s limits. And, we touch the place within that reaches out beyond our human definitions, those limitations that define us. We embrace that which can not be described, only felt as the essence of Life, the spirit within to be found in BEing.

Thank you for joining me here. Let’s do it again.

Janet Barrett

Podcast host Journeys Into Enlightenment with Janet

www.janetandbeyond.com

janetandbeyondpodcast@outlook.com

What's In Your Junk Drawer?

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 17:14:00 -0800

What's in your junk drawer?

Do you have more than one?

What does it say about you?

How are you a junk drawer?

These were some of our questions this last week in group. One of is getting her house ready to sell and she is clearing out, cleaning and repairing it. She was in awareness of how her junk drawer was filled with things that maybe were important in some realm of her life. And now, maybe were not.

Consider that this is the end of the year and a great time for clearing out the old. There are things that you have collected that probably had no place but together with other stuff that also didn't have a place. Like to like.

We were in awareness of how our lives, our homes all represent each of us. What is this drawer that is filled with odds and ends and tools, and maybe papers and what nots that have found their way inside this drawer? Stuff we don't want to lose but has no place may find its way into the junk drawer.

And, if we expand outward of this pattern might we each be perhaps a junk drawer of patterns of information, a collection of stuff that we call Self?

Junk is a demeaning value term. It can be used to indicate something of worth that is no longer. Or it still has worth but not in the same way as it did before. It a collective term as in "This is a piece of junk." Men may use this term differently than women.

How does a spider web come into it? I wondered myself as I saw one show up while we were being present.

The web is the spider's way to collect prey out of the air. They don't have great eyesight so they use their other senses. They use the vibrations of the prey in the web to locate them, decide if they are worth keeping and then wrap them in silk and they take to their nests to eat later. I can image that sometimes the web can catch other things than what the spider might eat. I wonder if spiders have junk drawers in their nests.

The web is not solid. It allows for air flow but it defines that space and funnels the air. It shapes it as it passes through the webbing. The dew or rain that can collect along the webbing conditions the air. Every web is unique to the spider.

But back to the junk drawer in your house.

You can sometimes feel helpless or overwhelmed with the odds and ends that every life encompasses. We can sometimes get rigid and eliminate what can seem chaotic quickly. Or we can find ourselves surrounded with stuff that we are not in the right mindset to deal with at the time. We can collect piles and piles, like the mail or the bills or both.

When one is stressed, or ill or not paying attention, the little stuff can become big stuff in our minds and homes. If you are reference oriented you might be overtaken with information that never gets to the right place and your piles overflow taking up space that conditions the air flow. Yo might be collecting stuff from others. You many not have a place for storage of your information. Dust and dirt can settle in every crevice. Maybe now the junk drawer never really closes ;and/or instead of one you have many. One in every room perhaps.

Now back to the junk drawer as your body/form and mind and Spirit.

Nutrition, utilization, elimination is the body's design for optimum health. How well is your body functioning? This also applies for our mindsets and our relation to Spirit. How cluttered are you? What sort of odds and ends have you taken in and are not using effectively or timely but stored away for a better time to deal with? What are your memory banks filled with?

What is in one mans junk drawer can be another man's treasure. Take this time to consider your willingness to look with new eyes at what you have tucked away in your junk drawer.

(What can be one wife's junk drawer can become a retired husband's tool drawer).

Janet Barrett

Life in the Beyond/ Journeys Into Enlightenment

janetb@janetandbeyond.com

www.janetandbeyond.com

You know your junk drawer. The one filled with things and stuff that has no place but you keep. It is filled with odds and ends that are singular but still important. Things still wanted but now separated from the original to be dealt with at another time. It might be filled with tools and serve as a catchall for the things that make up a life that are more worthy as the whole than as the separate pieces.

One mentioned she has several junk drawers.

We shared about how we each perhaps are a junk drawer. That in one sense you could view yourself or others could view you as a junk drawer in consciousness. What are you filled with? Everything orgainized and has a place or the place that holds for seemingly unassociated materials and gives them home?

What about the value you place on your "junk"? What is one mans junk is another mans treasure. What you might consider junk is your assignment of value and worth.

How do we define junk? It is interesting to take the list below and put the word drawer behind each one.

INFORMAL

old or discarded articles that are considered useless or of little value.

"the cellars are full of junk"

Similar:

useless things

discarded things

clutter

stuff

odds and ends

bits and pieces

bric-a-brac

oddments

flotsam and jetsam

white elephants

garbage

refuse

litter

scrap

waste

debris

detritus

dross

leavings

leftovers

remnants

castoffs

rejects

rubbish

lumber

trash

mullock

dreck

gubbins

odds and sods

rummage

What also came to into awareness was a spider web. How it is designed to catch prey to eat and how it works. Energy goes through the web, shaped by the web, and leaves behind a resonence.

Celebrating the Solstice and the Angelic Realm with Crystal Pomeroy

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 10:03:00 -0800

Joining Janet is Crystal Pomeroy, angel communicator, metaphysician, astrologer. Solstices honor the transitions of the seasons. Angels occupy a realm that is as least as old as humankind. Listen and let in the support of the angelic realm to help you enjoy the beauty and warmth of this challenging holiday season.

Check out this episode!

JIE Episode 51Blog/ The Realms Of Beyond Are Filled With HELP

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Mon, 14 Dec 2020 12:23:00 -0800

Journeys Into Enlightenment with Janet podcast

Releasing Tuesday December 15, 2020

Episode 51 Blog The Realms Of Beyond Are Filled With HELP

We are in the middle of another holiday season filled with virus. Unfortunately, not our normal holiday season filled with our regular cold and flu viruses which are deadly enough. We are dealing with the Covid virus. How are you doing so far?

My guest this episode Crystal Pomeroy brings with her an abundance of portals of different appreciations, traditions, myths and stories of both nourishment, renewal and HELP that we can access. Whether you are conscious today in your beliefs in angels or astrology, goddesses and gods and the power of Mother Earth does not matter. They live within your physical, mental, emotional, psychological, psychic, and spiritual DNA. For these are the realms of our ancestors and what served as the science at the time.

It is what they followed and believed in long ago. Before the written, in times of wall and rock paintings, the oral still echoes and vibrates. These are the sounds that live in your bones and blood from perhaps just outside of your awareness. And what we might call our imaginations and interests are often our connections to references from this ancestral memory bank.

If, you are feeling stressed, go to this place. Go to the place within that takes you in beyond your isolated, separated sense of Self and your personal story/illusion and unfolds into the realms and worlds of the ancients be they angels, goddesses, and forest devas. Allow your issues, those concerns that seem so important and perhaps are and let these energy signatures come forward. Feel the release that comes with accepting their timeless awareness of how all is connected as One. In beyond your limits is where the magic happens.

No matter your race, creed or inclinations it is your beliefs that form your realities. It is your biases and projections and perspectives at play with you as Creator. This is the truth that we so resist at times and want to hide from or deny. And it is a work in progress.

Life and Consciousness are spectrum oriented. All is allowed. There are no rights and wrongs and/or good and bad. These are judgments to be found in the human bias.

Suffering of all kinds can happen in our body/forms as well as joys and delights. Death is as real as birth. This is our dance of Spirit and Human playing out. What do we do with experiences that we may find ourselves involved in over the course of our physical lifetimes? Maybe HELP would be nice. In the Spirit realm or as Consciousness all is available. We can forget this when in form.

Many people have issues with asking for HELP. We have made it about charity, or we are too weak or needy. Religious dogmas stir. It is not a matter of being less than thought it may feel that way.

Consider instead, HELP as an element of flow. It is a flow that supports and enriches the spirit in the humanity that enriches the human awareness. Our ability to focus through prayer or meditation are access points to this flow. It is a matter of alignment within Consciousness not so much subservience to an individual. Which depends on your frameworks of religion or spirituality.

What is your reality framework? Accepting HELP is being open to the other energies that are empowered as Consciousness. They hold information that you might not have knowledge of personally but can access. The reality of HELP available as needed is useful. Not the HELP that is “not help but more work “kind of HELP. Not being attached to how it shows up is useful. What happens when your angel shows up and doesn’t look like you expect it to? Knowing that information I can access is all around me in any realm that I might find myself dealing with is useful.

Humans can be highly creative when it comes to blocks and defenses in accepting HELP. At heart, they often hold that they are less and not deserving. They have something to gain in being unaware of how they are resisting their own good fortune.

And remember, the HELP flow is also not one directional. It is a two- way path. If you ask for help you are open to helping others because you know the value of HELP. To play it forward or pay it forward, you are comfortable with acting as angel.

Next time just be open. Access your core, place your issue in front of you and ask for the part of consciousness that could help. Trust, and notice what shows up in synchronicity. Get in the habit of being in the HELP flow and enjoying yourself.

Happy holidays!

Janet Barrett

Podcast host Journeys Into Enlightenment with Janet

www.janetandbeyond.com

janetandbeyondpodcast@outlook.com

It Still Is And Will Always BE About Shared Heart

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Mon, 7 Dec 2020 14:53:00 -0800

I like to go through at times and look at what I was writing about a year ago. How different, how similar, how still appropriate in what caught my attention then for now.

This seemed timeless and appropriate to share again.

Happy Holidays and Love to you and yours.

Journeys Into Enlightenment with Janet

Episode 24 Released Tuesday Dec.3, 2019

Blog/ Breathing Through Our Shared Heart

First there was All, One. All/One includes everything as Consciousness, One Mind, Infinite BEing. In the wonder of Life we know as human, we have developed an outward sense of Self as we are individually oriented in our human form. Still, in our internal and external core, we are Consciousness as Oneness, where the distinction of Self is loosened.

The human heart is the first organ that develops into the body/form. It holds our connection to the All. One of the meanings of the word "heart" is core/essence. This is Consciousness that is in all of us. We share Heart through all our hearts as source.

In recognizing this incredible dynamic, how about we update our relation to All/One with a simple approach to being present. What would it be like to recognize, at our deepest levels this Shared Heart? Might we act different in our worlds if we lose our distinctions and sense of separateness that is prevalent these days? Might this be a way to unify again and bring wholeness to our world? Sometimes the simplest actions can have the biggest outcomes.

Try this and see what you notice.

Make some time and relax. Picture a Mobius Strip, that wonderful representation of Infinity and Love and Completeness. In my world, it is a dynamic symbol of Being. It is the one sided flat plane or line that turns on itself into a figure eight. At the crossover point is the heart, the center. For me, it represents Being in form and out of form, the crossover point either as birth or death. We circle around in being in form and out of form still complete just often unaware that we are in a pattern of being.

Now, just notice and let yourself feel how you are taking in oxygen into your body.

It comes in and in the coordination of body/form we align as our breath with the beat of our heart.

Feel your breath go into the heart like the Mobius Strip, through your heart and circle around behind you and then come back through your heart moving forward and outward.

Let yourself feel the movement as it circles around and comes in again and goes out the back of your heart and circles back around and goes back into your heart and goes forward and outward, circles around and comes back in.

Now bring the awareness that you are softening and dissolving your outside form and becoming only an energy state at the same time.

Feel.

Feel all as One again.

Feel through our Shared Heart.

Feel the shift as you come into a new awareness of your essential Essence as One through Heart Centered Awareness.

Janet Barrett

Podcast Host

Journeys Into Enlightenment with Janet

www.janetandbeyond.com

janetandbeyondpodcast@outlook.com janetandbeyondpodcast@outlook.com

Returning to Balance and Harmony in Our Community with Anne Ganey

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Mon, 30 Nov 2020 14:53:00 -0800

In this time of virus our communities are reflecting our inner turmoil. How do we find balance and harmony inside and out? Joining Janet is Anne Ganey of Spirited Journeys, LLC. Anne combines a broad public health background with her shaman awareness. Together they will share heart in the community of Oneness and open new pathways of enlightenment for you to enjoy.

Check out this episode!

JIE Episode 50 Blog/When BEing Alive is a Grand Adventure

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Mon, 30 Nov 2020 14:37:00 -0800

Journeys Into Enlightenment with Janet

Podcast Releasing December 1, 2020

Episode 50 Blog/ When BEing Alive is a Grand Adventure

How do you define BEing alive? What is your rule set and defining aligning principles in play about you and Life?

We each come out of family dynamics that have a set up to them. We spend our lives working out of this bias and beliefs systems. You are either in it and okay or looking to be out of it. What would it be like to be free to value and add excitement into your daily reality at your choosing? Not anxiety but excitement. Safety and self awareness your given.

What if you looked forward to opening your eyes each day and feeling the appreciation as you experience your breath?

Some of us don’t wake up into our day like that. We don’t want to wake up at all.

If this is the case what would it be like to reframe BEing alive into a grand adventure, every moment a choice with awareness to do something, feel something, different? It is all too easy to empower our habituated sense of Self into maintaining the illusions that Life is difficult, wearing, soul draining etc. etc. etc. And then you die!

If this is what lies in your expectation reality so it will be. If, you are depressed, it defines you. Would you like to have an adventure instead?

If you are frustrated, this defines you. Would you like to have an adventure instead? If you find Life to be full of injustice or conspiracy is everywhere and victims and abusers also predominate your inner landscape, would you like to have an adventure instead?

If you think that no matter what you do nothing changes you too have a setup for misery.

All of these are perspectives of how one can live their lives. All of them are illusions that help us in what way? How are they useful? There is a payoff lurking somewhere. And at times we know it and feel helpless to change it.

What if you could simply get out of your mindset of projected thinking and go deeper than your emotions to the realm within that connects to your core essence of BEing? Deeper than your projections of Self that hold your story /illusions of who and what you are and unfold into a realm of wonder and indescribable beauty? Where every story/illusion is appreciated and can become transcendent awareness enriching your life?

Something captures your attention. You decide to explore it. You may collect information about it from different sources that validate your interest or not. But you don’t know what something is about until you feel it for yourself. the details in the journey in our adventures are not known no matter how much you research or don’t. The adventure will take you places you have never been, may want to or not but you are better for it. It will have dramatic scenery and people and textures and flavors and moments of comfort and discomfort.

Danger and excitement. Many think they don't like danger or adventure. They like the quiet and safety of never being challenged emotionally or physically. So they are easily thrown off balance when the stuff that can happens in life happens. Being open to something different, whether it be a bowl of soup or a zipline experience is good for the plasticity of the mind and soul. Doesn’t mean you have to live in a reality of daily risk all around you but being fluid enough to appreciate your own skills and experience you own self confidence.

So take this moment to notice. Notice what your reality state of BEing alive is about and make a choice. You can keep it the same, with it’s perhaps illusionary sense of safety within the boundaries you are imposing. That is a choice. Or perhaps in accessing deeper into your interior landscape of the sacred that is there, you can make a different choice.

Where you are free to slip your old bonds of Self and expand into new adventures in BEing Alive. Where, Life is Grand.

Janet Barrett

Podcast Host Journeys Into Enlightenment with Janet

janetandbeyondpodcast@outlook.com

www.janetandbeyond.com

Mindlessness and Mindfulness in the Quantum Realm with Rev. Janice Hope Gorman

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 12:27:00 -0800

Consciousness, Oneness, holds both Mindlessness, no thought, and Mindfulness, awareness within. BEing present accesses both. Joining Janet is Rev. Janice Hope Gorman of the Hope Interfaith Center. Feel the expansive realm of living in Mindlessness to experience the freedom in BEing Mindful as you navigate through your life.

Check out this episode!

JIE Episode 49 Blog/ There is No Responsibility in BEing Present

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 12:49:00 -0800

Journeys Into Enlightenment with Janet

Podcast Release Tuesday November 17, 2020

Episode 49 Blog There is No Responsibility in BEing Present

One of the strong integral parts of Self is what we perceive as the doer. In our interacting in BEing physical we manipulate, make action, with our environments and its elements. We are Creator.

When we are doing for ourselves and others obligation and responsibility can come into play. Sometimes we are the oldest child helping our parents’ parent our younger siblings or even our parents. We take on others which can come from caring, or as servitude. It can happen to the point of burden. We become responsible for outcomes that all too often are way beyond our scope of power at the time and results can foster helplessness, guilt and punishment can ensue.

We develop roles and realities that others need to be protected and cared for and are too weak, or sensitive or senseless or stupid to manage their own lives without our interference. They make poor choices they need to be saved from. We form our ideas about others that may have nothing to do with them but both others’ opinions and our own biases and projections.

When we switch to BEing, we free ourselves of our created stories/illusions and their conditions and patterns. We are in the position to notice our patterns of the doer and develop awareness, become mindful of cause and action. We can play with our connection to others as our stories/illusions of Self, adapt, grow, evolve.

It is about unplugging, as my friend and guest this week Rev. Janice Hope Gorman likes to say. It is choosing to disassociate from all the stories around us and mostly in each of us to give pause to allow our inner Self dynamics to relax. We connect with our Core Essence, the Infinite. We can then appreciate, recalibrate and then orchestrate what we are actively creating in any one moment. It is checking in to our self generated projection of reality, our story/illusion of identity. We become self- caring and allow for change where wanted, where desired.

The stress we are all feeling seems unrelenting right now. There is so much overload or stimuli and information and intensity. People are running emotionally hot, not cool. How to relieve it is by choosing to release it in useful ways. By committing the simple shift through intention to enter into the field of heart centered awareness, of Unified Consciousness, into BEing present, into Oneness.

We let go of the burden and responsibility of our story/illusion. And each time we do so our burden becomes less. Our story/illusion dictates soften. Our reality starts to reflect new awareness, new expressions, new appreciations. The old truly becomes the past. Our wants, our desires, change shape. What was important is no longer.

In BEing present we do, take action, through BEing. There is no responsibility in BEing, only moving through inspiration. Motivation is outside influences. We use them to inspire us to action. You don’t have to do something in order to BE.

In the quantum field of Consciousness responsibility is just a position, one of infinite positions one can assume. It is not who you are. It is only a position, a place holder in the field that you employ into form. Use it wisely. This is the payoff of BEing present.

Janet Barrett

Podcast Host Journeys Into Enlightenment with Janet

janetandbeyondpodcast@outlook.com

www.janetandbeyond.com

Appreciation Transcends The State of Resistant Thought You Are In

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Mon, 9 Nov 2020 16:26:00 -0800

That’s why so many of us teach meditation. Because when you stop thought, you stop resistant thought. When you stop resistant thought, then you let it in. That’s why we teach appreciation, because when you’re in appreciation, you are not in the mode of resistance, and you are letting it in.

Excerpted from North Los Angeles, CA on 8/13/01

Our Love
Esther (Abraham and Jerry)

Did you realize that the boundaries in your story/illusion are creating resistant thought? When I read this quote above I realized that I had not thought of it in quite those terms.

That is exactly what happens. How many times has someone suggested to you an idea, or version of your reality of yourself or some challenge you were dealing with that you automatically rejected? That is resistant thought in action. How much have we missed out in life because we were in a reality state of resistant thought, not open to new awareness?

It is what we do, every human individual on this planet. Our minds are constantly reinforcing its projected belief system and it can do it to a punishing degree, whatever the issue is. That is the power of biases and perceptions that make up our story/illusion mindsets. You have a thought, information and experience comes in and you make discernments. At some tipping point it shifts to a judgment and becomes part of your behavior and a story/illusion element. It become closed to new thoughts and interpretations and Mind goes on to the next thing. It has become you.

Depending on our nature, we can build a lot of energy as part of the bias and become belligerent and righteous in our viewpoints. Ours is the only story/illusion and it is better than yours.

Our willingness to accept a new premise or another's awareness of our projection comes from a reality state of Openness. One that is fluid based instead of block based. You know, all those times you felt blocked and there you were. You did not know how to deal with your block and it was all consuming and huge. You could not move it. This is a "powerless to make some thing different" reality state you find yourself to be in.

What to do?

Recognize what you are feeling and thinking in your self talk. And realizing that is the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. That this is only where you are in the moment of awareness. Now access your inner wisdom, core essence where out of the quiet of no thought, more information will be available. BE present and ask "What is the value in becoming aware of your setup of thought?" How is this moment useful? What is gained by feeling and then being stymied by your concern? What does it feel like for this to be different? New thoughts as awareness are present.

Once you are open to new information, your willingness to accept it comes into play. And that too maybe takes you to awareness of the pattern. Could be of more resistance, or of voices or experiences in the past that are engaged unknowingly, pushing agendas that have coalized into form. It can reveal your pattern of behavior in new ways and at the same time release and unfold into new patterns.

Any engagement of potential into energy has its form, pattern, vibrational signature in your story/illusion. Notice i am not using words like weak for softer. Softer is a texture. Stronger/weaker is degrees of resistance. .

This is where we are right now collectively. This is what is possible. Remove the resistance to what has happened. It has happened. That is the past. Recalibrate to a reality state of Appreciation. What shifts when you lose your anger of defiance and resistance to your perceived, projected story of illusion?

Janet Barrett

Life in the Beyond/ Journeys into Enlightenment

janetb@janetandbeyond.com

www.janetandbeyond.com

Expanding the Power of Your Subconscious Mind with Jim Jensen

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Tue, 3 Nov 2020 09:09:00 -0800

Joining Janet is Jim Jensen who wrote "Expand The Power of Your Subconscious Mind," an updated commentary of "The Power of your Subconscious Mind," by Dr. Joseph Murphy. Listen in as Jim reminds us why this is a classic. He and Janet will consider the parameters of mind and the wisdom in learning to use your mind well.

Check out this episode!

JIE Episode 48 Blog/ Meditation in Times of Crisis by C. James Jensen

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Mon, 2 Nov 2020 12:34:00 -0800

Journeys Into Enlightenment with Janet Podcast

Release Tuesday afternoon November 3, 2020

My guest this episode is Jim Jensen author of Expand The Power of Your Subconscious Mind. It is an updated look at the 50 year old classic The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Dr. Joseph Murphy. Learn more about C James (Jim) Jensen at cjamesjensen.com and listen to our episode!

Meditation In Times Of Crisis By C. James Jensen

I was blessed to have been trained in meditation at an early age. I have been amazed for some time now why so few people in our Western culture do not regularly practice some form of meditation on a daily basis. With the unrest in the world, the Covid-19 pandemic, and current political scene, a quieter mind is important to resist joining the world in a state of fear and turmoil.

The amount of data on the benefits of meditation is abundant. Maybe if we all took time to meditate on the problems around us, we would have the ability to bring calm to the causes of stress from all the outside sources as well as internal fears and anxiety of things like possibly being exposed to this virus. I believe if people could sit with their political frustrations and meditate, they could see past the anger to resolutions to assist the planet with its current struggles. Meditation allows us to step outside situations to see like an eagle from a distance instead of feeling like you're in the eye of a storm.

I know when I feel rundown, fatigued, or concerned that I might become ill, through meditation I can direct energy to any area of my body that I think needs a “boost”, or healing, and most often ward off the physical manifestation of my dis-ease-ness. Knock on wood, but I can’t remember having had a common cold or the flu in over twenty years.

On the mental side, I have had some of my greatest ideas and inspiration come to me in meditation. Meditation quiets the mind. When you quiet your mind, you are able to listen or better hear those thoughts that may come from your higher consciousness or the creative center of your mind.

Having learned how to meditate has benefited me greatly in my professional life. Approximately 45 minutes before I was to speak to any group, I would find a quiet room and begin to meditate to align and balance. I would ask my Higher Self to please provide me with the most appropriate thoughts for that particular occasion. As I entered meditation, I would not think about my speech, the audience, or how “I” (the ego) was going to act. I would simply quiet my mind, release any stress associated with speaking to a group whether it was to my own employees or other peers.

Many doctors treating children with anxiety have found using meditation to be very useful with their young patients. For many suffering with conditions like ADHD it may be the only thing that will help them quiet the mind for any extended period of time allowing them to relax and be calm.

Meditation also is a wonderful thing to experience as a couple, a way to relax together. My wife Jeri and I have been meditating for years. I think it may be one of the keys to our long and very happy life together.

Janet Barrett

Podcast host Journeys Into Enlightenment with Janet

www.janetandbeyond.com

janetandbeyondpodcast@outlook.com

Sending You Roses

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 14:38:00 -0700

I am sending you roses. Breathe them in. Enjoy!

Janet Barrett

Life in the Beyond/ Journeys Into Enlightenment

janetb@janetandbeyond.com

www.janetandbeyond.com

Holding Ourselves Together Energetically with Pamela Aloia

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 16:27:00 -0700

We are spiritual creatures of potential and energy interacting in worlds of potential and energies. What are the elements to enjoying ourselves in BEing in body/form in this dynamic cosmic soup? Pamela Aloia is the author of “The Daily Cloak,” a spiritual guide to energetic clearing and protecting. Feel with us as we construct a solid foundation on which to build and enhance your daily energetic practices and awareness.

Check out this episode!

JIE Episode 47 Experiencing Energy

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 13:40:00 -0700

Journeys Into Enlightenment with Janet

Podcast Releasing Tuesday October 20, 2020

Episode 47 Blog Experiencing Energy

One of the most delightful experiences of body/form is to experience one’s senses, to feel, hear, see, touch, smell and to “know” things. The fun comes in when you can feel, hear, see, touch, smell, and “know” things that have some sort of an energy signature of awareness and not so much necessarily solid in form, like ghosts or angels or fairies and nature devas.

Maybe you are like me and have been aware of different energies since an early age. My friends and I can see much with our inner eye, dead people for instance. Or maybe you have a history of feeling energies that were identifiable in some way, but you could not see them. You could feel them either or both physically and emotionally. I have symbols that show up in different ways to my inner eye. You might have a sense of Déjà vu often, or knowing before the phone rings, that sort of thing. It is entertaining in my realm and something one can look forward to.

All of it at times was thrilling, or maybe alarming depending on who I was at the time and the situation. It was just a thing that was part of me, usually unexpected but I was open to it all. I have had many different experiences over the years, including channeling to running healing energy through my hands. My experiences were most often in a reality of being helpful, user friendly and not about the battle of good/evil that it can be for many. I was not alarmed and judging what I was witnessing as bad. There was no horror or fear, only Grace at times and neutral the rest. But dealing with people’s projections takes stamina and centeredness and neutral terrain within.

Of course, when I was young, I was not always clear or understanding about boundaries and how energy works. I got into metaphysical studies in my early 20’s when I realized it was a part of my life. I wondered how someone could feel” bad” or unsettling in some way to me and I felt “bad”. I have felt attacked and then at times used. And, along the way I was perhaps clumsy with others in their feelings I am sure.

We are all sensory creatures with bandwidths of sensation that extend beyond our human limits into our metaphysical range. BEing energetically sensitive is easier when you learn one’s own nature and develop energy hygiene. When you are wanting to help another, understanding energy and potential dynamics is essential to successful work. There needs to be respect for how you are both organized within. You can realize that energy can take any form and like a blade be two sided, and due to the bias of observation, positive or negative. When in itself it is neither, just a manifestation of projection.

We all experience energy differently and unique to the individual so there are guidelines to consider and frameworks to embody that make life as an energetic being delightful and rewarding. All too often people can feel overwhelmed or done in by the energies around and in them. And most of the time people are not in conscious awareness of the energies around them that are affecting in some way, positive and negative unless it is brought to their attention.

All information, life, stuff, fits within the core of Consciousness so it can be interacted with. It doesn’t matter if it is in the past, the future, the cosmos, your neighbor. Energetic dynamics abound. It just depends on your internal settings of sensitivity, tolerance, and story line which determine your reality settings and what you consider real and not real, possible, not possible.

Everything is vibrational and informational in nature when it is reduced to its essence. Energy is vibrational and can clean, clear, protect, heal, destroy. It provides us with intuition of the present and organizational in terms of time as past lives and the precognitive of the seer of future events. It connects us with other energetic awareness of forms corporeal and incorporeal such as angels and other life forms. It resonates with all elements of living matter such as crystals and plants and animal life and our space around us as in feng shui and the senses that track surroundings. Everything living is registering information and is connected.

Energy is found in the known and unknown, the manifested and unmanifested, our notions of what are real and not real. Energy does not care what you think, it only reacts and responds and forms and develops into patterns of vibrations that we sense and interpret and experience as the habituated thought and behavior. Again, and again, time after time. Unless, some thing happens in our rule set to instigate change, shift, in the moment.

For me, when I work with clients or students it is about appreciating their references and how they are helpful or not to them, not to me. That is what being energetically clear, neutral, to me is about. I have no agenda to push, just clarity for the often-felt confusion that is present which is what our issues most often are, confusion between mind and heart usually.

I am an empath, an energy empath. I feel energy in people, places, things, words, etc. in my body. We all do in some way, to some degree. It defines me. These days I look to benefit from all my trainings, experiences and awareness to “feel things from within my field” and not so much in my body or in attached manner. I realize that long ago I made the choice to embody this time, in this way to explore Life within the body/form and to explore BEing. It has taken me many places.

We all have our answers inside of us and where we have a sense of out there, somewhere, sometimes so buried, so wrapped up in a sense of lost that it is helpful to have another find the link. We share in this, this wonderful sense and experience we call BEing.

It is quite a journey of enlightenment that we are sharing.

Janet Barrett

Podcast host Journeys Into Enlightenment with Janet

www.janetandbeyond.com

janetandbeyondpodcast@outlook.com

A Nudge Good For Any Day of The Week

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Mon, 12 Oct 2020 17:04:00 -0700

Friday’s Nudge:

There are no accidents

If it's appeared on your life’s radar, this is why: to teach you that dreams come true; to reveal that you have the power to fix what's broken and heal what hurts; to catapult you beyond seeing with just your physical senses; and to lift the veils that have kept you from seeing that you're already the person you dreamed you'd become. 

And believe me, that was one heck of a dream. 

Tallyho, 
The Universe  

My friend Mari Hall posted this on her facebook page the other day. She is the founding director of the International Assoc. of Reiki and always has wonderful daily postings. It must have been last Friday. I saw it yesterday. It is a wonderful directional marker in Consciousness. it is a nudge that is good for any day of the week. 

Where one is, is here. Sometimes you don't know how you got here but you find yourself here. And, sometimes, you know quite well how you got here. And, you don't always feel good about it. 

But here is where you are. Acceptance is helpful. Trust is implicit. 

You are in an individual body you call Self, Me and I within a mindset observing that body called Self, Me and I. How mind is formed shapes how you view your body, here, in this moment. 

It is a moment. To be used however you want. Acceptance is helpful. Trust is implicit. 

Are you conflicted? Are you in denial? Are you , are you, are you....? Are you okay? Are you aware of the wonder to be found in being alive, in BEing in formed sensory awareness that registers not only wonder but the lack of, as pain? It can be uphill or downhill from here. 

Whatever, however you view this moment to BE it is that and not, as it is only illusion from your mind story. Acceptance is helpful. Trust is implicit. 

No body wants pain or suffering but we do it so well, so easily when we allow it to be in our formed reality. We can learn how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. It can hold meaning of many different nuances.  It is not the final version but only part of the version, the illusion we are running, in and often from. 

If you are in judgement of this moment, it is only that, a discernment of the moment. If is is part of a judgement you are holding about life in general and yours in particular it is set in stone, carved deeply. Acceptance is helpful. Trust is implicit. 

All of this is about your Core Essence choosing to interact as you in your body/form. What your Core Essence is choosing this go-around to enjoy about Enlightenment. Maybe this is why we seem to enjoy our misery. Because from the perspective of Consciousness all is to be enjoyed for the sheer sense of feeling as part of the spectrum. Consciousness is. It reflects us and is much more. For it holds both the manifested and unmanifested, the known and Unknown, the real and not real. So, at any one moment both are available to us to engage as and with. We are exploring and utilizing contrast in the spectrum of Life, of BEing in being alive. 

All our moments have the meaning we give them. If there is no need to validate our moments in our stories what is possible? Is our moment one of many like a faceted jewel, catching the light as we turn it and different at every perspective, always beautiful no matter the refraction? 

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. 

Janet Barrett
Life in the Beyond/Journeys Into Enlightenment 
www.janetandbeyond.com
janetb@janetandbeyond.com

Return to Wholeness Using Your Wheel of Truth with Lynn Andrews

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Mon, 5 Oct 2020 15:27:00 -0700

Every life is like a wheel, encompassing spokes that go in all directions in relation to the center hub. Too often you can feel uncomfortable as your wheel turns, aware of only a few spokes and perhaps missing some so our wheel is not stable and strong. Joining Janet is Lynn V, Andrews, bestselling author of the 21 books of the Medicine Woman series. We are the hub, the center of our wheel, our universe. She will be sharing about the ageless tools we can use to feel honestly and bring our wheels into balance, harmony, and wholeness.

Check out this episode!

JIE Episode 46/The Power in a Deck of Cards

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Sun, 4 Oct 2020 17:50:00 -0700

Journeys Into Enlightenment with Janet

Podcast releasing Tuesday Oct 6, 2020

Ep 46 Blog The Power in a Deck of Cards

There are many ways to engage wisdom in the world. One way can be as simple as a deck of cards. I am not talking about those you will find at the blackjack table and such. That is about a different kind of wisdom.

I am talking about the kind that serve as empowered objects to assist us on our journeys of enlightenment.

What decks you may be drawn to is because something in you resonates to it, just like the other things in your life. What appeals will be unique to you and that is good. The deck may call up old memories, in this time or another or it can serve to awaken and develop new sensory ranges in you.

There are more different decks of cards to play with and enjoy than ever before. Remember it is always about enjoyment. Encode awareness with enjoyment and those things that we each deal with over the course of our lives get easier.

I tend to enjoy decks that reflect different bodies of knowledge and thoughts. What they have in common is they all reflect a lightness of being about them for me. Could be Angel cards, Messages from the Universe, Creative Actions, Thought of the Day, different Abraham decks, BEing Present, What to be grateful for, The Power Deck and the Sacred Inner Oracle cards. All kinds of decks. I even have a children’s deck of Disney heroines that represent for me, different shades of feminine models. I think I have 16 decks out on my console to be enjoyed. I use them together, separately, in conjunction depending on the occasion. Sometimes I draw one card, sometimes combinations, just depends. I use different spreads at times. When working with another I might tend to draw from a certain deck, what ever is showing up in that moment.

For me they are all powerful as I hold them to be powerful tools of awareness. I have made up cards out of books of knowledge at times for they represent different ways of embracing energy functions and dynamics. I see them as extensions of wisdom in easy clear patterns of information sometimes just out of reach that can gain and guide my attention. I can spend a fleeting moment on my way out the door or I can sit with them and play in awareness. They can be a focus of meditation and my day’s orientation. They serve me at my whim and discretion, just waiting.

I have empowered them to serve me. I respect them. I like the feel of them in my hands. They connect and open me up to avenues of modalities and teachings beyond my personal knowledge and experience. They represent the expanded interactions of human senses, out beyond. They connect with our core awareness, our intuitive range and capacity. They can bring into focus what is present, what was past, what to be aware of, what the future is open to and where I am right in this moment. They help bring into the immediate what is not always right in one’s face in that moment.

If I am drawing cards for another not present, I sit and let them be present in my minds eye. If I hand you the cards, we are in a state of respect for will come to pass. I am not flippant with them though the recipient might initially hold that viewpoint. I always respect what comes up as I know it is truth in that moment even if it is out of the individual’s awareness and liking.

I allow my wisdom to speak in my approach and I honor that. Not my attachment, my wisdom. Cards are fun for me and embody truths in our actions and thoughts and illusions, mostly of our illusions. For if one is not liking what is showing up, we are in our illusions that are blinding us.

They bring one back to center.

Janet Barrett

Podcast host Journeys Into Enlightenment with Janet

www.janetandbeyond.com

janetandbeyondpodcast@outlook.com

What is Different Today From Yesterday?

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Mon, 28 Sep 2020 15:59:00 -0700

My birthday was last Friday. I am now 66 years old. What a difference a day can make. Because having reached this point in my life is a reward to be treasured. My journey with Consciousness Technologies started when I was 50 and dying. These years of rethinking have made all the difference. When I was 65 I was impressed to have enjoyed the reality of 65 and now, a couple days later I am in a new reality, if I let myself move into it.

Because 65 had plenty of challenges in its reality, it is easy to stay attached to it, even if I don't want to. Any stirred up emotion is powerful and can hold us in its thrall. This last year has opened up new normals in awareness that can benefit all of us.

I want my now to be different but unless I allow myself to reorient, my now will be just a continuance of what was, leading to a predictable uncertain future. Sometimes it might be hard to tell when something is degrading, as in aging and not dissolving as into something wonderful as ageless.

At this age I know this better than I did when I was younger: Shifting skill sets and priorities and interests do not have to be encoded as losses collecting and getting older and worn out. Our bodyforms have a wonderful ability to use different systems to help when one system might become stressed more than another.

It can be about wisdom being recognized, present and utilized.

Our stories of being in a form are powerful. The realities we can sometimes be in relation to, like disease and mayhem and tragedy can run us ragged. So we stop. Choose to stop. Realize what we have aligned ourselves with and what it would be like for them to ease within our hearts. It is okay to fulfill destinies in our stories of bodyform. It is okay to have no answers or justice or fairness as much as it is okay to have answers and justice and fairness. All have roles to play.

Sometimes we think love hurts. Sometimes those we love do not know what love is or how to love back. What we are holding as love is wound not love. For love does not ever hurt. It may only be for a moment or it may be for a lifetime or many lifetimes as it beyond space and time. It is.

Sounds simple to state. To do? Maybe not so simple. For Life can offer complexity, which is built upon a whole lot of simple. So do not do. Just BE. Accept you are worthy without doing.

Thanks to all of you who have helped me in these last 5 weeks with my health concerns. It was love tenfold plus to be embodied. In all the clamor that our daily lives have been subjected to, you made time to lend not a helping hand but a helping heart. I appreciate it very much and know I am better for it in all the variables my life encompasses.

Let me share this moment with you as a thank you. Access your sense of the Infinite with me.

Notice your breathing. Just breathe. Do not make it anything special because every breath is already special. Breathe and now notice your heartbeat. Be aware that you have added it to your breathing now. Allow them to sync up. Feel your awareness of your core essence sheltered in your breath partner with your body's form in your heart's beat. You are alive. You are BEing alive.

Now let. Let what was yesterday be yesterday. Let all that rises up in you and says that you need to hold on to yesterday just BE. Do not judge, do not react. Just be. Love it like the child's attachment to the moment. Something happens. They may cry to release the energy. And then, they stop and are on to the next thing forgetting what was so important just a moment ago. Know that what was, was. Know that what is, is. Know that what will be is free to BE, whatever that may BE.

Just BE Love no matter what you feel.

Just BE Kind to those different looking.

Just BE Open to possibilities.

Just BE Curious about your world and what you find there.

Just BE Respectful as the given. .

Just BE Appreciative for having reached this moment and what this moment holds for you.

Just BE Emotionally warm to those who challenge you.

Just BE Aware that challenges exercise us, form us, bring us into awareness of what our biases are.

Just BE No matter what you are told, what you hear, what you judge to be your truth.

This is my reality of 66. May seem like my reality of 65 but since I experience evolution as active transcendent reality something is different.

Janet Barrett

Life in the Beyond/Journeys Into Enlightenment

www.janetandbeyond.com

janetb@janetandbeyond.com

Our Sacred Inner Oracle with Lynn V. Andrews

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 07:25:00 -0700

Being present, we may access our inner oracle. An oracle can be anything that awakens a vision or a voice of wisdom that helps us find our way to our own truth and harmony in life. Joining Janet is Lynn V. Andrews, internationally bestselling author of the 21 books in the Medicine Woman Series. A shaman, healer and mystic, she shares her wisdom and her new Sacred Vision Oracle Cards that can guide us to inner peace.

Check out this episode!

Breathing in Appreciation

noreply@blogger.com (Janet Barrett) — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 18:41:00 -0700

It was like living in a movie and not a happy movie. Sort of like one of those black and white nuclear fallout movies of the 1960's that I grew up watching when young. Even more surreal for this was sepia, brown and white colored fallout.

I live in Portland Oregon across the river ten minutes from downtown. We have been hit with forest fires up and down this beautiful state of Oregon, ditto Washington and California the last few weeks.

On Monday early last week or maybe it was the week before, time expands, we sat outside and enjoyed the warm fall breeze, clear skies and the air crispness and sunlight we experience here in the Northwest. It was delicious. Starting a couple of days earlier, the news started warning of conditions of fire that the warm winds could help foster. How could that be? And then I looked to the south and witnessed a brown sky. And looked to the north and saw blue skies and clouds. Reality was shifting and quickly.

That wonderful warm breeze with the dryness of air created havoc for the next several days in the forests. Between man creating arson and nature and her elements at work that was the last clear day as land became inflamed. It would lead to the worst air quality in a city in the entire world for nearly a week. It was quiet. No people, no birds chattering. No wildlife to be noticed. And, we would be wearing masks on top of masks when outside. Those Covid protection masks had to have another mask on top to clear out the particles burning and filling the skies.

It was layers of surreal. Sealing the house from outside air. Setting the air conditioning to recycle air. No going outside unless essential, leaving the television on all day for the ongoing news updates and reports and listening for the stage of your evacuation alert for your neighborhood. And knowing that the amazing countryside that we all enjoy and gives us reason for living here was being leveled along with homes, livelihoods, families and livestock compromised. The logistics of moving livestock and their haybales etc. to shelter in a city.

You don't know how much you have until you lose it. Until you have to move it, until you have to choose and be out in 10 minutes of someplace you may have lived a lifetime. Doesn't matter if it is a forest fire or the the house next door with an electrical fire.

The population had sore throats, compromised breathing and headaches. Not to be confused with Covid symptoms.

And to drive anywhere? We could see two blocks and less in distance here in the city. Surrounded by fires in outlying counties every direction it seemed. Brown fog that was not fog made of water droplets. but fog made of soot etc. Every morning we would look out and the brown fog was still there. The sun would come out as there was light but there was no breeze that is usually present. Waiting for the rain and breeze to move things. But the brown fog settled down and in and covered our states to at least 10,000 feet up and 1000 miles out into the ocean. A solid blanket that kept planes from dropping retardant and water from taking off.

And, we waited. Drove past the man at the bench outside the sports bar that had finally opened. He was vaping, the people sitting there smoking as they ate in the worst of that brown. A different sense of air quality than mine.

We waited for the first signs that the air currents and rain to do what they do and move and break down it all and push eastward into neighboring states and spread across the Midwest. That was the following Monday and it didn't happen. It would be a couple more days. And then it rained and the air cleared.

Daily television reports stopped, daily newspaper postings of 37 fires burning disappeared. Fires shrank, people went to find the remains of their lives and deal with the shock. Lives not only interrupted but forever different. There is no going back to what was even if one's property was safe.

Surreal as people started showing up places and traffic started up again. I sit outside in my yard again. It is so lovely outside. No longer sepia tones but bright greens of new growth from the drenching rain. Colors here, landslides there. People everywhere.

We lend support where we can. I breathe in appreciation. I share my breath with you and yours. Thanks to all of you who called to ask how we were doing.

Janet Barrett

Life in the Beyond/Journeys Into Enlightenment

www.janetandbeyond.com

janetb@janetandbeyond.com