All posts by Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Yin & The Right Yang

Leave a comment
Yin, poised for the right Yang... - Photo by Chuck Ketchel
Yin, poised for the right Yang…
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

Yin is primal, magnetic energy. Yin is earth that awaits impregnation, the primal plan that ignites creation of all life. Once yin receives its yang, it manifests all physical life. Yin is the total stuff, the material of creation. Yang provides the blueprint, the idea, the spirit. Yin brings it to life.

In truth, yin does most of the work. But we are beings in bodies; material life is the essence of this incarnation. The mind—ego, consciousness, spirit—is inextricably yoked to its yin. No action can happen without an intention. The question is, from what yang does yin find its mate? Whose thought, whose knowing is directing the show?

Yin is the egg that needs to be ignited to move into life. Yin is a bundle of energy, but without its yang it remains inert, potential energy awaiting its cause. In this magnetic state of deep longing, yin is vulnerable to becoming entranced by yang with all its spirit sparks. Yin can become bedazzled by the thoughts and ideas of may different yangs.

For instance: I rest, I’m unmotivated, undirected. Thoughts come: “You should be productive.” “You should read.” “No,” says another idea, “you must rest, it’s the day of rest.” Still another states: “You deserve a nice comfort food.” Thought offerings abound.

Perhaps I’ll give up the inner struggle and magnetically draw guidance of another. “You tell me how to find meaning in this day.” Or better yet, “You become the meaning of my day.” Let us enjoy the day as a unit, having the unit fill in the meaning of life.

Inner work, inner wholeness actually require self-impregnation, that is, fertilizing our actions with the spirit of our deepest selves. In practical terms this means all actions emanating to fulfill our deepest truths. And there is no program for this. All programs are prepackaged yangs, not the yang that springs uniquely to meet the truth of the present moment.

And perhaps the deepest truth might actually be to eat the comfort food in this moment. There are no rules greater than the truth in this moment. Only the purest of yang can provide that truth, so yin must be discerning, foregoing trance, foregoing false prophets, waiting with patience for the right yang to spring with certainty from the knowing of the heart.

For yin, merging with knowing of the heart is divine union with its one true yang.

Chuck

 

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Managing The Heat Of Passion

Leave a comment
Flare up of passion... - Photo by Chuck Ketchel
Flare up of passion…
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

Emotion, red hot feeling, is the heat of passion. Whether it be passion in the form of burning sexual desire, seething frustration, or boiling rage, the energy of passion is intense and blood red.

The urging of this volatile energy to escape its containment often results in explosive actions that overwhelm the environment like a loud shock of thunder. Ever burning sexual desire can obliterate true union if its urgency of release cannot be titrated to genuinely meet and connect with another.

Much of modern psychology is dedicated to helping the ego properly channel and regulate these deeply instinctual passions in everyday life. The home base of these passions, though experienced in the body, lies deeply within the unconscious mind. Ego is not the home of passion; ego is civilized. Ego in a passionate state is either channeling a passion or is possessed by one.

Jung suggested, one hundred years ago, when we experience a passionate emotion that we pause, contain it, and ask it to present itself as an image in the psyche. Once the image presents, the ego can interact with it in an active imagination dialogue that gives voice to the image and allows the ego to mediate a solution.

The other morning, as I stepped out to feed the birds, I discovered snow and ice. I decided to snow blow, putting my brand new, bright red Ariens snowblower to the test. Before I started, I sat down to read a few pages of Going Native by Tom Harmer, a scene where he was being schooled by a shaman to take off and dry the distributor cap to a flooded engine on a tractor that was failing to start. Then I went down to the garage to start my snowblower.

It refused to turn over! Within minutes it too was flooded, but this machine has no distributor cap! I could feel the frustration rising in me, but after 15 minutes realized I had to let go. I could not make the driveway and walkway safe for others. I had to go to work.

Arriving at work, my frustration had turned to dejection. I was in no shape to greet my first client. Still seized with emotion, I decided to use the I Ching to provide me with an image, as Jung suggested, to objectify my dilemma. I received hexagram #59, Dispersion, with a nine in the sixth place, which turns into hexagram #29, The Abysmal.

The image for Dispersion is that of the wind blowing over water, breaking up and dissolving any hardness accumulated in the water. The guidance offered was gentleness that takes the ego off the hook for failure. The shamans would say, “suspend judgment.”

The nine in the sixth place states: “He dissolves his blood. Departing, keeping at a distance, going out, is without blame.” I had, in fact, dissolved the accumulated blood red frustrated state by departing, going out, and keeping at a distance from my Ariens!

The I Ching then takes me down into the ravine of the Abysmal, a doubling of the trigram water: a yang line caught between two yin lines, water trapped deep in a ravine. The yang line is creative, a masculine planner now manifesting in the world of yin, the earth.

In the ravine... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
In the ravine…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Water, in the Chinese symbology, is masculine, as its dynamic movement flows like a river. The rock walls of the ravine are feminine, solid earth that contains and gives form to the water. The secret solution for the masculine energy in the Abysmal is to allow for the slow accumulation of water in the ravine where once it reaches a certain level will naturally resume its flow.

Thus, patience is called for, not pressing forward at all costs. In my case, this meant not only letting go and walking away, as I did because I was out of time, allowing my own energy to disperse, but also allowing the gasoline to slowly disperse as it naturally will, and reading the manual—also an act of patience!—so that next time I get the choke setting correct when I fire up my mighty Ariens!

The clarity, relief, and readjustment of inner relation with my passionate unconscious, through engagement with this process of imagery with the I Ching, allowed me to receive my first client with utter calm.

Taking it slow and easy,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Great Ego Reformation

Leave a comment

The birth of “I,” nature’s seedling of evolutionary advance, finds itself now on the brink of a great correction, the positive outcome of destruction. And what is it that needs reformation in nature’s great experiment, the ego? The answer lies in its reorientation.

Time to return to the Tao... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Time to return to the Tao…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Ego had its traumatic birth as it was cast from the Garden to find its own way. Estranged from the immediate guidance of the great archetypes—instinctual ways of successfully living through millennia—it was forced instead to chart its own course, a mighty tall order indeed for such an inexperienced infant.

Ego, in its infancy, has no choice but to inflate itself: “I can handle this. I am equal to the situation. I can figure out a better way.” These were the attitudes ego had access to, lacking the old automatic connection to all-knowing nature. Ego had to pretend or, with science, definitively believe that it could unlock and direct the mysteries and treasures of nature to better advantage. How better illustrated is the culmination of this ego inflation than the party of little Nero’s we see strutting their stuff in the current political circus? Unfortunately they only mirror the true state of the collective world ego that tends to project its shadow onto those who willingly parade as fools.

We all share in this ego dilemma and this is our advantage: as within, so without. We, each and every one of us, share in this inflated ego dilemma and, therefore, are all equally able to participate in the great ego reformation that will accompany our deeply transforming planet into new life.

So what is needed for this reformation?

We may be the “brains” of the planet, but we certainly have not acted with much intelligence. Our orientation has primarily been narcissistic and dissociated; narcissistic in our tribal self-centeredness and dissociated from the greater body that supports us: Planet Earth.

As the brains of the operation, we must first re-associate with the rest of the greater physical body of earth and accept that we are in and part of that body. The Hindus and the shamans agree: until we die, our subtle energy body—the brain or spirit—is inseparable from the physical body. Though we certainly can journey beyond the body while in this life, it is only in death that we truly do part. Consequently, our intelligence must be focused on the needs of the body, individual and worldly, while we are here. Actions and decisions must be in conformity with the true needs of the body and not separate from it.

This is the essence of Taoism: actions that flow with the natural course of the river. Spirited attempts to change the course of a river for private enterprise violate the needs of the greater whole and represent the actions of an inflated, dissociated ego.

In the river of Tao... as within, so without - Photo by Jan Ketchel
In the river of Tao… as within, so without
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Reconnection to the deepest rivers of the archetypes—the instinctual ways—ready to once again serve the true needs of the greater, full Self, is the new orientation that collective ego is flowing towards, albeit through Mother Earth’s initiation of environmental upheaval. Surrendering to the truth is the only intelligent option, and it is the option survival is moving us towards.

We are all participants in this great ego reformation every day, in every decision we make. This is true democracy. Every life counts, every decision counts. Every right action, however minute, accrues in the world bank of survival and transformation. All donations greatly appreciated.

On my way to the bank,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Healthy Feminine

Leave a comment
Spring so soon? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Spring so soon?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

I said to Jan on Sunday that it felt like the first day of spring—yes, January 31st! Temperatures in the low 50s, people out walking, time elongated to the point where by 8 PM it felt like 11PM, certainly time for bed!

The world is changing rapidly now. There is no going back. Though we ground ourselves in the familiarity and constant contact of social media, pervasive and lasting change is swooping in all around us.

I was delighted, on our timeless Sunday, to find and watch a documentary on Marion Woodman, renowned Jungian analyst, whose personal life and transformation speak eloquently to the coming death and rebirth of the world we live in as we undergo deep transformation. Her sharing of the rise of the feminine as the missing healing factor in our growth process is positive and quite hopeful. I couldn’t have said it better.

So, I turn the stage over to Ms. Woodman.

Here is the link: Dancing in the Flames

Thank you,

Chuck

 

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Furor & Führer

Leave a comment

Labor deepens. The world anxiously awaits the birth of a redeemer. The era of Obama has seen great expansion and inclusion. However, the speed of change has caused a swing to the opposite pole, that of boundary and protection, guns not roses. What’s at play beneath it all is the tango of two opposite, yet intimately related, instincts: sex and self-preservation.

What is being constellated, devil or angel? - Photo by Chuck Ketchel
What is being constellated, devil or angel?
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

When sex dominates, we open our hearts, our borders; everyone matters, basic needs are met. When self-preservation dominates, our hearts are closed and steeled; we sacrifice life, we protect our own.

When sex dominates, the spirit of earth-based marijuana becomes legal. When self-preservation dominates, the distilled spirit of alcohol, an artifact of science, reigns.

When sex dominates, African-Americans, gays, transsexuals, Syrians, Muslims are welcomed. When self-preservation dominates, freedom shrinks as old order conservatives restrain the lower chakras. The head rules, the body politic is divided and controlled.

At a higher level these opposites are the interplay of love and power. When power rules, sex is rape. When love rules power is flaccid. When love and power vie for dominance, destruction and rebirth are the consequences. The goal we seek is to reconcile these opposites in a balanced union, and that brings us to the question of where we are now: What truly is the state of our Union?

America seeks renewal. Trump has risen as a potential redeemer. He presents as a freakish Dionysus with his golden locky mop. He embodies the spirit of a spontaneous orgy. He shoots from the hip with total unapologetic humor, sarcasm, and fury. He at once expresses youthful spontaneity and ruthless power. He is at once inclusive and divisive. He is uncontainable. Even the most powerful conservative Republican monied lobby cannot control his chameleon spirit. He’s alive and America is bored.

His appeal touches a latent excitement in Republican and Democratic citizens alike. His enthusiasm trumps reason, and this excites the volk of the American spirit. It’s a layer of the psyche below the ruling ego with all its boring limits and controls.

Under Trump our madness comes alive. We can all play with the Joker as he takes control of Gotham City. Who needs the movies? We can all become lustful, power-driven billionaires who can act out our wildest fantasies. We can simply, impulsively and completely, wipe out a country that threatens our security and our playtime.

Trump is dangerous because in the midst of all this furor we are missing a latent Führer. Hitler came to power because he, like Trump, tapped a latent Dionysian spirit of change that burgeoned beneath the beleaguered spirit of the German people. What broke forth under Hitler’s reign was a mass psychosis and an orgy of death.

Trump is not a redeemer. He is a false prophet, falsely presenting a balanced union of opposites. And yet we cannot ignore the need he excites: a reconciliation of sex and self-preservation, love and power.

True conjunctio, the opposites united by spirit...
True conjunctio, the opposites united by spirit…

However, if we study Trump closely, we see that though he embodies the energy of Dionysus there is no love in his person. This is America’s problem too: the Goddess is completely missing. Mature feminine wisdom is the bridge to reconcile these two opposing instincts of love and power, and wisdom is severely lacking in the youthful mess we find ourselves now steeped in. This is America’s true blind spot.

Youthful furor never stops to reflect and reconcile. And now it has truly upped the ante as it seems we might be swept into electing a Führer. Hopefully, a higher wisdom will prevail as we face this possibility. Or perhaps there will be another step needed before we can find our way to wisdom and advance beyond this dangerous dance of opposites into true conjunctio.

As always, we as individuals are microcosms of the collective consciousness as well as the collective unconscious. Roughly speaking, the instinct of self-preservation finds its home in the power drive of the ego. Sexuality, in contrast, remains largely in the body and the instinctual unconscious. If we approach the relationship between the ego and the unconscious from the place of higher feminine wisdom, that of relatedness, we are offered an opportunity to align these very powerful instinctual forces toward a united, balanced effort of survival, for both the individual and the planet.

However, we better still vote with Wisdom!!!!

Chuck