The Edge of the Abyss-Volume 1 is now available in both Print and Kindle editions! Simply click on the book cover icon in the left sidebar and you will be taken directly to the book’s page on Amazon.
We always invite our readers to write comments at Amazon and on our Riverwalker website and Facebook pages. Although we have elected to publish our books and let them go into the world in an energetic fashion, without advertising or self-promotion, we are fully open to the energetic flow of the universe in whatever way that unfolds. So, in all humbleness, we invite our readers to be energetically available to write reviews and spread the word in whatever way feels right, or not.
Volume 2 of The Edge of the Abyss will be published in the next couple of months. Jan has already begun work on the final edit.
The Marathon of Energy cannot be stopped now, not by a psychotic youth, not by the NRA. We are in a new dream. Like the dinosaurs of old, who once pounded the earth intending to fly—and now do as birds in the sky—we too, as a species, are cracking the shells of our old mold intending a much more inclusive world of infinite possibility.
In this new world, we are witnessing a flood of inclusiveness as new elements flesh out the dream in the form of gay marriage, immigration reform, a new economic frontier—even marijuana legalization is but a blink away—to cite just a few.
The old guard of religious control, riddled with hypocrisy—actually retiring a Pope—is in retreat. Political dominance by a white elite is in permanent recession. Despite the hiccups of Tea Party or Old Confederacy protests, the now twice-born/elected black Obama stays at the helm and Hillary waits patiently in the wings.
There is no returning to an old dream. That dream, as John Lennon put it, “is over.” This new dream, seen clearly by Brother Martin on the other side of the mountain, is in full swing, and we can barely keep up with the pace of its unfolding.
We must understand that the world is literally on speed now, as it breaks down the old and ushers in the new. This is the deepest meaning of the momentous, traumatic events that flit through our screens in nanoseconds: the time of great change is upon us. It’s not about mass psychosis, though psychosis will captivate the vulnerable, and it is contagious, but it’s really about birth, the evolution/transformation of our species and world into a newly sustainable dream.
New Dream
The fate of our species in this new dream is dependent upon our ability to be in alignment with truth—the true needs of a new balance. The earth is abundantly demonstrating its willingness to swallow us up and flood us if we continue to insist upon old world practices of pollution and reliance on non-sustainable fossil fuels.
The peoples of the world are increasingly demonstrating an unwillingness to live in a 1% world. Ironically, America, once the beacon of freedom, now lags, as it clings illusorily to a dream long finished.
The challenge of now is to appreciate the momentum of the masses that the interconnected movement facilitates by social media, but shift awareness away from the Me of it all. The new dream is not a “Me” dream, it’s an all-inclusive “We” dream. In the all-inclusive we-dream, no life is more important than another. In the all-inclusive we-dream, we acquiesce to the true needs of the self, each other and the planet. In the all-inclusive we-dream, it’s affection over profit. The all-inclusive we-dream is not a socialist regression but actually a responsibility progression.
If we all assume responsibility for the truth within ourselves and our planet, we launch our mass shared dream into unbelievable evolutionary journeys into infinity.
Don Juan Matus told Carlos Castaneda that the view of human beings is frozen, fixated out the back window of the caboose of a train that is moving forward into oncoming time. Humans are not free to face life as it approaches, like the engineer who drives the engine car, but instead see only the rails of life already lived.
This fixated view is the product of our self-importance, which reigns supreme over our ability to assimilate and interpret reality as it funnels all events through the filter of “me,” thus depriving us of the fuller view of life, as it truly is, in real time. The sorcerers of don Juan’s lineage strove relentlessly to become beings of no importance; mindful shamans, fully present to life unfolding, in the engine car of life.
The shamans place no blame on humans for their narcissistic predicament, in fact, removing judgment is the primary mechanism to freeing all events from being rendered as a reflection of self. For example, I’m standing on line at a store, calmly waiting my turn to go to the register. Up walks a being who cuts the line and proceeds to the cashier. I see red. I’m offended, in fact I’m incensed! Who do they think they are? Do they think they’re special, that I don’t matter! It’s not fair; we all had to wait. This person must be stopped, confronted.
No one is saying anything, though obviously everyone has noticed. I’ll be the hero! I won’t allow my self-importance, my value, my significance to be undermined or negated. Not again. Not like when I was a powerless child. Why do I have to be the one to stand up? Why is it always me that has to take the risks and maybe get hurt? Am I afraid I’ll be hurt? Will my voice crack? Will sound come out if I open my mouth? Am I supposed to turn the other cheek? Isn’t that just a copout? Is it okay to be angry? Is someone noticing that I’m nervous? Etc., etc., etc.
LET ME OUT OF THE CABOOSE!!!
This is an example of the incessant internal dialogue of “me” that reports and constantly gauges all events in terms of my self-worth, self-importance, self-esteem, etc. If I, on the contrary, feel worthless, then the dialogue switches from offense to pity, and a stream of comments that construct and reinforce my inferior self spew out. Perhaps I’ll realize, as I stand on that checkout line, that I don’t have the right to exist and hence have no right to complain about any injustice perpetrated upon me. Either way, “me” is the common denominator of the internal dialogue. Feeling unimportant is equally attached to “me.” It’s still all about “me,” however diminished that “me” may feel.
Now that’s more like it! – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Being of no importance is being mindfully present, without obligation to change, fix, or defend anything. Without importance there is no offense. How can I be offended if I have no importance to uphold? I might choose to act or not to act when standing on that checkout line, but my criteria for action will not be to defend offense to myself. I might indeed challenge the perpetrator, but won’t be offended by the outcome of my challenge—it simply doesn’t matter. There’s no self-importance to defend. I am not attached to the outcome; in no way is it a reflection on me. The mirror of self-refelction no longer mars my view when I lose my importance.
As a being of no importance, I cherish and have gratitude for all who might offend me. You give me the gift of breaking the mirror of my self-refelction, as I break through my attachment to being offended by you. So thank you! Through your gift, I further unburden myself of the weight of “me,” too cumbersome to carry on my journey through infinity. I’m ready to hop out of the caboose and move up to the engine car. Deep gratitude for helping me to lighten my load and to clarify the view—the view of a being of no importance facing oncoming time. And quite a clear view it is!
We humans are a lot to manage, a lot to really keep in mind. The possibilities that we might perceive, that we might interact with, that we might experience are quite extraordinary, and quite unpredictable.
It takes a tremendous effort to limit our perceptions; to reign in our possibilities; to create a uniform cohesive being, familiar and recognizable, constrained yet utterly bored. That constrained human being is funneled into the habits of greed and consumption with the fallback of self-pity for all that we are deprived of. However limiting this construction is, it’s the price we pay for our consensus reality. That reality is bursting at the seams with discontent now—bored to death with its limiting and limited purview—and it remains for doubt to hold us together, to uphold the old world of reason.
I pick up the shell of a bug and place it on a stone where it sits lifelessly. Later, I turn my awareness to it and, lo and behold, it gets up and walks away! For a moment I leave this world, this consensus reality of reason. I am in heightened awareness, where anything is possible, where the lifeless get up and walk away!
I stalk that reality, the bug indeed keeps on walking. I am sober. I am grounded. However, the guardian now swoops down and issues its edict: What I just saw is unreasonable, impossible, it could not happen. It did not happen. Obviously, there was a flaw in my perception.
Doubt moves solidly in and explains the misperception. Obviously, the “shell” I thought was an empty carapace was not empty at all. We must always be thorough in our investigations. Life must have been camouflaged or neatly curled up in that shell because new guts do not simply reappear in empty shells and walk away.
Carlos Castaneda recommended that we suspend judgment and allow ourselves to truly see. He also pointed out that we never fully lose our rational minds so we might want to consider giving them an appropriate outlet, say some form of study. Carlos and all of his cohorts were academics pursuing doctoral degrees, their rational minds intensely focused and busy, allowing their awareness to travel into other realms freed of the guardian of doubt.
Be careful when you drive. The rational mind is so preoccupied with upholding the laws of the road that heightened awareness can slip through the guardian’s grasp. People often have the most extraordinary experiences of expanded reality—entering other worlds—when driving. Not recommended! Keep your eyes on the road!
Do we dare sneak a peek? – Art & Photo by Jan Ketchel
Recapitulation is another gateway to our true birthright of heightened awareness. In recapitulation, we often walk into the heightened awareness of alternate realities that we once fully lived but subsequently denied. In an effort to construct a cohesive self, the guardian of doubt censors much of our experiences, particularly experiences that break the rules of reason, of what one should expect in a familiar world.
Sometimes we are seized in recapitulation so completely by an experience that, for a moment, doubt can’t help but be suspended. And yet, but a moment later, doubt sweeps in to restore the order of a familiar self, a familiar world, a reasonable mind, effectively blocking out real experiences of the extraordinary. However, once we intend the path of self-knowledge, we open the door to the fuller experiences of all we are—beings far more capable than the limits of our reason.
Doubt, the guardian at the gate, the gargoyle of limitation must be confronted repeatedly. It warns us that if we go outside the gate it cannot protect us, thus we are challenged to find cohesion in the greater truth of our being.
That’s where we are now, in our time, as individuals and as a species, beings needing to pass by the guardians at the gate. We are charged with constructing a new consensus reality of affection for ourselves, each other, and the fuller truth of all that we really are.
From the moment I opened Carlos Castaneda’s first book, The Teachings of Don Juan – A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, in the early 1970s, I was hooked by the energy of the intent of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico. Many people I have encountered over the past 40 years, who opened Castaneda’s books, were similarly affected. Others could barely get through a chapter.
There are many paths to knowledge. We are all challenged to find for ourselves the one—or the many— that resonate with our heart’s intent. The issue really is to discover our individual energetic configuration and what is needed to uniquely advance it forward. The challenge is to get beyond the self-importance of “my method” and wake up to the fact that we are all part of the same transformative dream. The secret is grasping the awe, the awesomeness of this all-inclusive dream.
Carlos Castaneda’s shamanic family, of this generation, was preceded by 27 generations of similarly configured small shamanic groups. Carlos’s generation was the end of that shamanic line as previously configured. This ending/transition coincided with the 1960s and the dawn of a new era in human consciousness. Castaneda has been considered the Godfather of the New Age. I think Carlos was an insinuation of a possibility. I think there were many Godfathers, and Spider Grandmothers too, ushering us into this evolving dream.
Castaneda and his shamanic partners merged with the intent of their sorcery line and launched a new shamanic configuration: No secrecy, no hierarchy, all knowledge, open to the masses. In this new and daring configuration, the Nagual—the traditional head of a shamanic party—resides in each one of us. This is similar to the Buddhist’s view that we are all the Buddha. Though we may participate in life as a mass, we are all charged with the individual responsibility of meeting the challenge to lead ourselves to freedom. Castaneda was uniquely suited to herald in this transition, as his mother had been a committed socialist.
In this new line of shamanism, the core culprit to be wrestled with is self-importance, which leads to greed. Freedom is to be found only through piercing through the veil of the greedy self that has led the world as we know it—our concensus reality—to the brink of destruction. How timely the unleashing of this shamanic guidance on the worldwide stage!
Carlos was fascinated by the energetic potential of the masses to effect great energetic change. He would sit on the stage and look out over us in the audience of his lectures and workshops and marvel at the energy circulating and building through the crowd. Everyone who has been drawn into the energetic dream that he and his cohorts unveiled is part of dreaming this dream forward, a new world built on the solid footing of the intent of affection—the Shaman’s version of the Buddhist’s intent of compassion—to lead us beyond the crumbling walls of self-importance and greed.
I was deeply immersed in Castaneda’s world throughout the 1990s and emerged to discover my small part in this vast dream of transformation. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was to retrieve the tool of recapitulation from the shamanic world and apply it to the clinical condition of PTSD. I had realized, while in that shamanic world, that EMDR shared a bilateral similarity with the recapitulation breath, but I realized it fell short of accessing the magic and awe of the shamanic world—the gateway to evolutionary change. It took me a while to fully grasp the true potential of these two tools, when used in combination, to offer total healing from PTSD. The intent of this shamanic dream is not simply about healing, however, it’s also about freedom.
Carlos dreaming it forward…
We all want to heal; we all need to heal. But let’s face it, we’re all going to die anyway. The real challenge is to maintain awareness and continuity at death—to continue the dream, to dream it forward, as it transforms into new arenas in infinity. From this perspective, PTSD is a portal—the initiation into a shamanic journey that opens the door to the magical tools to intend a new world. Trauma offers us a glimpse of the awe of that new world.
All shamanic journeys begin with some form of traumatic knock, as we take journeys beyond the body—beyond the confines of the reality we’ve been socialized to uphold. PTSD is the unsettled legacy of those journeys as we brace ourselves to straddle the different worlds we have experienced. In recapitulation, we reconcile those worlds and are offered the opportunity to launch ourselves into new worlds of possibility. In recapitulation we are offered the opportunity to experience the awe, unfettered by the crumbling constraints of a world previously upheld by fear, greed, and self-importance.
All who take up the challenge of facing and aligning with their inner truth are part of the mass energetic current of change that is now sweeping through our world, the same mass energy that Carlos would stand before us and speak of with awe. We are all dreaming it forward.
It’s not about believing, it’s not about allegiance, and it’s definitely not about self-importance. It’s actually the end of self-importance. Everyone, everything matters equally. That is the key to affection. It’s not about one practice or another being the one and only practice; it’s about doing whatever resonates. It’s about dreaming forward a new dream now, founded on truth and affection—a dream that soars on the wings of intent.
