
-Artwork © 2026 Jan Ketchel
A mirror to the outside world now reflects a world we can no longer count on in a familiar way. All is unfamiliar. How does this reflect life in our changing inner world? Welcome to life in the unfamiliar.
The root of the word familiar is family, that powerfully impressive network we were all born into, archetypally designed to help us achieve some core sense of self that has a consistency of feeling, perceiving and knowing, and provides us with feelings of security and confidence as we navigate life.
The imprints of these primary relationships and experiences create formidable beliefs about ourselves, and our world, which sink into the subconscious mind and govern our lives and form habits that largely define ourselves to ourselves.
This habitual self becomes our greatest place of safety, for better or for worse. Although the subconscious mind is indeed the center of our divine creativity, it is often limited by ancient internalized beliefs about ourselves that deny us access to our true creative potential.
The divine subconscious mind cannot solve this contradiction of old suggestions versus new possibilities, since its function is to create, not to analyze.
For change to happen, the divine conscious mind must reconcile these opposing beliefs by identifying and destroying old errors of belief, by aligning with truth, and by delivering wise and powerful suggestions to the subconscious mind, inviting it to open doors to new rooms of living within the personality of self. And these rooms are often quite unfamiliar.
A myriad of dream homes—both my own and my clients’—flow through my mind as I contemplate the theme of unknown rooms, newly discovered, in a present or past home.
Sometimes these rooms are occupied by old monsters; the familiar shadows of yesteryear, with all their limiting beliefs and habits. But often they are openings to a golden shadow, the innate potential within the self waiting to be discovered, nurtured and freed to blossom.
To fully live in the unfamiliarity of now in a new way is to relax the persona, the familiar face of everyday habit, and adopt a new habit of daily gratitude. The practice of gratitude upon awakening strikes down the old tried and true grimace, which typically grounds the new day in familiar disappointment, in favor of joy and lightness of being.
The practice of gratitude confirms that you are the master of your life. It is your thoughts, new or old, that generate how you feel. When you are fully in charge of thinking thoughts that positively raise the vibration of your energetic life, the key that opens a new door in the subconscious mind, a new positive feeling of being is manifested which is impervious to outer events.
Invite the self to open the doors and walk through the past horrors. They are only ghosts holding the space of what needs to be fully owned, mastered and surpassed. Beyond those rooms are the doors to total fulfillment, but, to enter, they do require a willingness to become a being completely unfamiliar with itself.
Let gratitude alone become your guiding light. With constant gratitude you will never be the same. Let that life in the unfamiliar become your new familiar.
With gratitude,
Chuck

