Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences! Many of the shamanic and psychological terms used in Chuck’s essays are defined in Tools & Definitions on our Psychotherapy website.
This morning, as I pondered my topic for this blog, I struggled to find a clear focus. I opened Castaneda’s Wheel of Time to page 165 and the following: “The human form is a conglomerate of energy fields which exist in the universe, and which is related exclusively to human beings. Shamans call it the human form because those energy fields have been bent and contorted by a lifetime of habits and misuse.”
What is the relevance of this quote to now?
The shamans contend that we generate our world by contorting energy into habitual patterns which then encapsulate our lives. In so doing we lose access to possibilities beyond those habitual patterns. As I observed the health care debacle this week, with its enactment of good and evil energies, which I previously wrote about in Darkening of the Light…, I pondered the habitual category health care, a major component of the human form.
When Jeanne and I first confronted her diagnosis of breast cancer, we were seized by the conventional wisdom of health care that demanded immediate surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, etc. Due to a fated pause, having to wait for an appointment, we were able to step outside this powerful habit and examine its energetic consequences from a place of calm sobriety. As a consequence we chose to by-pass the conventional habit, as its energetic contortions were simply unappealing. The components of the conventional habit consisted of submitting to accepted procedures and treatments that debilitated, poisoned, and weakened; rendered the individual powerless; appeared at root to be driven by greed as it carefully and thoroughly discredited and shut down possibilities for cure outside its rigid categories; and defined cure with an illusory cloak: five years of survival. Obviously, many people take this route with success. However, for us it was not energetically viable.
We chose instead to be guided by the intent to heal, synchronicity, and the conviction that everything is possible. Our journey is well documented in The Book of Us, but the end result was both magic and death. We are beings who are going to die, yet we spend the lion’s share of our energy preserving our bodies through obsession with the habit of health care in a very narrow sense. Meanwhile, we miss the real show: our inevitable energetic transformation into infinity. What is the state of our energetic health care? Are we prepared for this transition? Have we discovered the true purpose of our life? Have we accomplished it? Have we achieved completion? Are we ready to evolve beyond the human form, or must we return due to incompletion?
Jeanne’s transition was sheer magic. She not only achieved completion, but was able to forge a channel of connection to those who reside in human form. This she accomplished through her healing efforts in this world as she stepped outside the poppy field of conventional health care. I am reminded of the sage comment made by Dr. Incao, an anthroposophist who we met early in our journey, that sometimes real healing requires death.
Many look at Jeanne’s outcome and see failure, after all, they observe, she died! I myself have been judged by some as delusional, the product of pathological mourning because I communicate with the dead. These judgments are the guardians of the conventional human form, encased in its wall of rationality. After all, the dead don’t continue to communicate to the living, that must be the product of some form of delusional wish fulfillment! Sometimes my own rationality can emerge strong enough to entrap me in a mood of doubt, with its tempting invitation to return to the comfort of the tried and true human form. I had such a moment earlier this week when I questioned everything that has happened over the past eight years. That night I had the following dream.
I am with Jeanne. We have met a couple with a teenaged daughter. We walk about, freely sharing our unconventional journey through the cancer world. This young daughter suddenly stops and states: “I don’t agree with what you’ve done, and you should be careful, not talk so freely.” The dream progresses. Jeanne and I are to be married. We are older. We go to a doctor who lightheartedly asks if there will be witnesses at the wedding. He is considering foregoing the required medical exam before marriage when he realizes that there has been illness, hence an exam is required. I am immediately frightened. Once he examines Jeanne we will be discovered; all our unconventional treatments will be exposed. Then I realize, the whole time we have been out and about Jeanne has exposed her neck. Her collarbone on the left side has two deep holes in it, shaped like a double-barreled shotgun. Apparently, I had forged those holes as part of her treatments, and they were deep. Jeanne had been exposing them the whole time, quite carefree, without embarrassment, no concern for infection; in fact, she displayed them almost like ornamental jewelry. I thought maybe we should fill the holes. As the doctor started to undress Jeanne, I suddenly became aware, with great amusement, that she is dead! It didn’t matter, the examination was immaterial. With that I awoke.
Is she really dead? Am I too uncomfortable standing behind the energetic facts of our journey? Does my rationality prefer that I fill up the channel we achieved? I believe the dream was a course correction for me, Jeanne reminding me of all our truths, most importantly the two-way channel we have forged between worlds. The guidance that flows through this channel from Jeanne in infinity has opened up the possibility of an expanded configuration of the human form, which corrects its limited habits and misuses. What’s more, she raises the focus on health care to a new level, that of energetic health care, with its practices supporting the successful completion of life in the human form and continued evolution in infinity. This would be the passage of the ultimate health care reform bill, which is completely in the hands of each individual.
As usual, should anyone wish to write, I can be reached at: chuck@riverwalkerpress.com or feel free to post a comment.
Until we meet again,
Chuck