
-Artwork © 2026 Jan Ketchel
Mirror, mirror, on the world,
what is the truth, of it all?
Darkness, darkness,
a blackout, over all.
The darkness reflects a world blackened and misled by delusion and error, absent the light of truth and wisdom.
The sage parents of our world, Truth and Wisdom, though always present, wait in silence. They know that their willful yet immature child must suffer the impact of its actions to truly grow.
Much pain and misery are meted out, and much pain and misery must equally be suffered. These are the natural consequences of cause and effect. Such is the state of our blackout world, as it cavalierly pursues its erroneous intentions.
Truth and Wisdom are always available for consultation, but their answers can never take sides. All of humanity are their children. Their purview is wholeness, all-inclusive, and for the greater good of all.
The willful child is not ready to share. It certainly does not want to hear the unbiased truth from its parents. And so it must play out its desires, until its lonely selfishness is ready and wanting and needing of greater inclusion. Timeouts from parents, however wise, never achieve this depth of growth.
The world is flush with deception, opinions and errors whose actions shake the roots of safety and stability and generate primal anxiety. The Earth itself mirrors these effects in the extremes of its weather patterns, threatening the survival of all.
The saving grace of this pervasive breakdown is its eventual clearing of the grave errors that black out our view and access to necessary changes. In its place is the coming of the Age of Aquarius, the rising of greater truth and wisdom to lead our worldly dream into greater wonderment, the next stage of our evolutionary path.
For humanity to reach this level of heartfelt desire, it must first fully play out its obsession with narcissism, with all its repercussions. Then it will be fully primed to experience love beyond its self, love for the greater good of all.
What is our role individually in this time of blackout? Well, as always: as without, so within.
We are both parent and child within ourselves. The inner child is the main character in this life. The inner parent occupies the place of the High Self, replete with divine truth and wisdom. The parent’s goal is that the child mature and find its way to happiness and fulfillment.
The parent freely offers guidance, particularly when genuinely consulted, however also knows that real growth is an inside job. Every child, at whatever stage of life, must live and learn from its own errors before it can become settled within itself, ready to serve the real truth.
In general, the child operates on the pleasure principle. Pleasure includes sensual pleasure but also refers to achieving happiness, contentment and fulfillment in all areas of life. The child is endowed with innocence, a purity driven by the pleasure of curiosity and discovery, unsullied by shame and fear.
Unfortunately, the craving for lost innocence is so great that it is a fundamental driver in child sexual abuse, where the abuser seeks to steal innocence from the child.
However, innocence is also lost in many other ways during childhood, including the impact of socialization upon the purely innocent child, who’s blank slate is immediately filled with the rules and regulations and beliefs of life in this world, as well as through the side effects of normal developmental lines, including encounters with inner narcissism and the vicissitudes of love and attachment.
The child state, whether in actual childhood or in adulthood, is on a mission to regain and achieve its innate state of happiness. The vast majority of dreams I have ever looked at, as a clinician, reference the child element in some form. The child is always depicting our growth potential or our growing challenges.
Often, the child, or ego in the personality, harbors false stories and beliefs, which defend against the truth and sensitivity of its lost innocence and the pursuit of its genuine desire for happiness. Operating thus, in a blackout state, it must live out its illusions until it is ready for the truth.
These are the inner errors we also see being committed upon the outer world stage, which black out the light of truth. The child, or ego, might turn to its inner wise parent for guidance, but, if the ego is still prejudiced—wanting to hate or desire what isn’t best for it—the parent must remain silent.
Growth can only come when the ego grows beyond attachment to the negative gratification derived from a self-destructive behavior. Ego must live out its illusions to truly grow to this new place. And when it has grown to experience pleasure beyond its unproductive fixation, it will find itself in greater alignment with Truth and Wisdom, the wise parents within.
The greatest guidance for growth now, in this time of blackout, is to ignite the light of honesty within the self. We can stop ourselves, like good parents, from doing what we shouldn’t do, but it will be defeated if we don’t arrive at real pleasure on a more truthful level.
Be honest with your participation in your illusions. Question if that’s really where you need to be at this moment. Perhaps it’s time to move on now. Perhaps it’s time for a real change. Open to change in alignment with truth and wisdom—when you are truly ready.
Shedding light, hopefully,
Chuck