Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences!

They left together this week, Charlie’s Angel, Farrah Fawcett and the musical icon, Michael Jackson, embarking upon the next phase of their definitive journeys. Farrah fought so diligently with determination and focus to hold onto life in her body. Michael, the boy/man, the archetype of eternal youth, himself sought rebirth in this world as he, just as diligently, prepared to launch his own comeback. Death chose to take them on the same day. So, Death, what is the meaning of this synchronicity? What is it you want us to see?

With Farrah, we see the best of ego-intent to preserve life in this world. With Michael, we see the best of drinking from the fountain of youth, refusing all agreements with aging. In the end, death teaches that, however noble the strategy of transcendence, we must relinquish our grasp upon our solid form and transform into sheer energy.

The shamans, like the Buddhists, keep this moment of inevitable transformation central to their everyday lives. Each day they state: I am a being who is going to die. They live their lives impeccably, with the awareness that each act in this world may be their last. Hence, they engage each moment, fully present and unattached. They practice their journeys in infinity while in this world, honing their awareness for their definitive transformation into energy at the moment of their death.

These journeys in infinity are available to us all. All they require is that we continually break our leases with the myths that house us. The core myth, of course, is that we will live forever in our solid form. That was death’s gift this past Thursday when it snatched Farrah and Michael from our midst. For a moment the entire world stopped, even AOL. We were treated to a moment of truth. The ultimate myth buster, death, does indeed take all.

In that moment, when the myth was shattered, we glimpsed our own mortality, as beings on our way to dying. We were all Michael underneath a white sheet, being delivered into a simple ambulance, on our way to the morgue. Death offered us a moment of clarity, detachment, love, and excitement at the possibility of being with true angels and eternal youth, as energy bodies, in the playground of infinity.

I welcome your comments. Should anyone wish to write, I can be reached at: chuck@riverwalkerpress.com

Until we meet again,
Chuck