All posts by Chuck

Chuck’s Place: Sitting Duck Energy

November 4, 2011 Chuck 3 Comments

Early last Saturday morning we acquiesced to the real possibility that the predicted absurdity of a severe Nor’easter in October would actually blanket us. An ambitious plan of preparation ensued: shop at Adam’s when they opened, deal with the already fallen leaves and snow, clean the gutters, prepare the snow machines, the generator, etc.

We finish at Adam’s by 8:15 a.m. As we drive cautiously down the exit lane through the parking lot we stop to allow a car to back out of a space while another impatiently interrupts that process, hurriedly slipping into the space next to it. Suddenly there is a loud shout and a commotion and we are blindsided as an SUV pulling out of a space—obviously oblivious to us—rams into the rear side of our car. To make matters worse, the driver then hits the gas instead of the brake, lifting us off the ground!

I was completely caught off guard as my attention was focused in front of me. I had no emotional or energetic reaction other than surprise and curiosity. What just happened and what does it mean?

It was 100% evident that we were sitting ducks. We had done nothing wrong. I have no attachment to feeling victimized—that clearly wasn’t the point—I don’t need that lesson. The message was more about the energy that is now upon us. No degree of careful preparation or defense can forestall the inevitable. We were indeed simply sitting ducks. Just like a Nor’easter in October, with leaves still on the trees, we are all sitting ducks. We are all being cornered now by an energy that cannot and will not be stopped.

I watch this energy reverberate now through many dimensions. Occupy World Street finds its way to Greece this week. In an effort to forestall chaotic revolution, Prime Minister Papandreou calls for a national referendum, a vote by the people on the proposed debt deal for Greece imposed by representatives of the 1%. The IMF and the European Union deal-brokers offer Greece 10 years of indentured servitude in exchange for funds to finance its debt.

Sitting duck energy is prepared to hammer that deal differently and the banks and Wall Street are terrified of that. Their reaction to Papandreou’s surprise move: How dare he even think of going to the people of this ancient cradle of democracy and risk destabilizing the world economy?

The bottom line as of this morning: even though Papandreou has agreed to pull the referendum and even step down from his post, even though he caved, there is no holding back the energy of now.

MF Global, the as-of-this-week now bankrupt Wall Street investment firm, saw the writing on the wall, as it had overly invested in the “secure” higher interest of European debt. The reality is: the 1% are in trouble and they know it! The markets are in trouble! World economics that catered to the greed of the 1% is in serious trouble—sitting ducks too.

Greece may drop the euro and leave the European Union. Who might be next? Italy? I see a potential cascade of tumbling nations receding into simple autonomy once again. I see a breakdown of world financial interdependence. Greed has had its day.

On a more personal level, I’ve observed sitting duck energy absolutely corner many people this week with very deep truths and challenges—it’s obvious: there is no escape.

Take counsel from sitting duck energy:

Lesson #1: Suspend judgment, it’s not your fault. It’s not personal, though it will expose the deepest personal truths and challenges.

Lesson #2: There is no escape from sitting duck energy, only acquiescence to processing and reckoning with the truth revealed.

Lesson #3: Realign your life with the truths now revealed by sitting duck energy. That means alignment with the truth that it’s all leading to a new, very much needed balance as new worlds form both personally and globally.

And that is the final truth to face: a new world is indeed in order; sitting duck energy is making it possible. It doesn’t matter what final decisions Papandreou or the IMF or the European Union or the banks make, the power is now in the hands of the 99% and it is unstoppable because it is fueled by sitting duck energy. And the final outcome of sitting duck energy will be the same no matter what: CHANGE!
—Chuck

News and Notes

Winter Storm

October 30, 2011 Chuck Leave a comment

October 29, 2011 brought us a major snowfall. We got 18 inches of snow on our little mountaintop while the village of Red Hook, a mere three miles down the road, got just a few. The other day’s dusting was just a warmup. Our power is out, but with our trusty iPad we should be able to have a channeled message posted as usual on Monday. Readers of Infinity will check in tomorrow. Enjoy the sunny day!

Jan and Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Doubt—The Enduring Sentinel

October 28, 2011 Chuck Leave a comment

During recapitulation we use intent to shift us into places of non-ordinary reality where we discover parts of our personal history hitherto completely unknown to our everyday selves. Although we may encounter many triggers in everyday life—events that evoke anxiety, fear, bodily sensation or fleeting images of prior experiences—the full knowing of the events of our lives requires that we shift into non-ordinary reality to retrieve the full truth of our lives lived.

October 28, 2011—An undeniable sudden shift into non-ordinary reality

Whenever we experience events in life that fall outside the realm of normal, our hold on reality is threatened. Inwardly these events are experienced as overwhelming and disintegrating, often accompanied by dizziness and nausea. Our sense of self that is based on normal reality is forced to dis-integrate under the impact of experience that happens outside of everyday expectations. In order to hold onto some sense of a cohesive, recognizable self when the experience ends, a set of reorganizing defenses are employed to make the experience fit into normal expectations, or reality as we expect it.

These defenses range from rationalization—where a non-rational experience is cut and pasted into a rational one—to repression, where the experience is completely lost to memory; it simply doesn’t exist in one’s personal history.

As we go deeper into the intentional process of recapitulation, the body opens the hidden reservoir of personal history stored from experiences of non-ordinary reality. The body takes us into a direct, unedited reliving of those experiences. This is not a process of mental cogitation or speculation, this is an experience of direct knowing. This is the experience of worlds colliding, the world of ordinary reality with the world of non-ordinary reality.

As these worlds meet, so do different selves meet. The self constructed from experiences of normal reality meets the self resulting from experiences of non-ordinary reality, each isolated and unknown to the other until the moment of collision.

The impact of the truths of experiences from non-ordinary reality upon our working sense of self and the world at large is deeply challenging. Suddenly we may be forced to face the fact that people we have loved and known to be good people actually violated us in horrific ways. We might also discover that things we definitely did in states of non-ordinary reality, like leaving our bodies, defy our rational grasp of the world. We might also discover that behaviors that we have engaged in for a lifetime that have led us to a sense of a deeply flawed, bad self, were actually defensive maneuvers to rearrange reality and make survival palatable.

The self of survival is not the true self. Constructed or not, flawed or not, it nonetheless is and has been the working definition of self, the familiar self, the self that has held down the fort for decades. In recapitulation that self is asked—or forced at a certain point—to take the journey to find the self locked away in non-ordinary reality. This is the ultimate journey that removes the barriers to all the truths and allows for the mergence of worlds, resulting in the full birth of the true self.

As we work our way through recapitulation, we encounter the defense of doubt—the enduring sentinel of the self of ordinary reality. I call it enduring because it is astounding how, despite a growing sense of deep knowing of experiences from non-ordinary reality, it persists in its ability to cast a long shadow over the validity of those experiences.

In a recent article from Harvard Magazine (Nov-Dec 2011) reference is made to a study that determined that repression—dissociative amnesia—is a “pseudo-neurological symptom that lacks medical or neurological basis.” The researchers conclude that repressed memory is a “culture bound symptom,” a product of 18th century Romanticism following the Age of Enlightenment. They hypothesize that the notion of repressed memory endures into our time due to its attractiveness as a dramatic device.

Studies like this show the power of doubt employed to preserve a rationally constructed world of ordinary reality. This is the kind of energy behind the concept of “false memory syndrome,” constructed to shut down forever any attempts to expose the truths of events stored from encounters with non-ordinary reality.

The old sentinel can give way to Buddha consciousness that can handle the truths of all worlds.

Doubt serves the process of recapitulation to the extent that it insists that the events of non-ordinary reality be fully experienced and fully known. However, at a certain point, it’s time for the old sentinel to put down its sword, a worthy warrior that has protected an old world so gallantly for long enough.

It’s okay, it’s time to allow the new self, the true self to be in the world, in full possession of all parts of itself, with all of its powers in hand. This is the self that can handle the truths of all worlds, an evolved self, ready to lead and fully enjoy real life!

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Before Completion—The Cauldron

October 21, 2011 Chuck Leave a comment

The era of dominance by greed is coming to completion. This is the message I’m given as I consult the I Ching for a reflection on NOW: we are in the time of Before Completion.

The necessary changes have been prepared for. All that remains is to cross the river to new life. However, just at the point of crossing the I Ching posts a stern warning: STOP! DO NOT CROSS! The time is not right yet!

First, it says, we must visit the hexagram of The Cauldron where important work to ensure a successful crossing must be completed.

We find the cauldron stored in the sacred temple of the ancestors. It is a huge bronze vessel, forged to withstand the heat of a large fire, in which foods for nourishment are cooked and blessed by the ancestors.

The Cauldron is a sacred chalice that nourishes the true needs of mankind. To eat from the cauldron is to consume real nourishment from the divine—to consume what is truly needed.

The I Ching is showing us that the vessel we need to forge, to safely cross the river to new life, is the cauldron: We must consume from real need in order to free ourselves from being consumers of insatiable greed. If we can forge a self that consumes from true need, in alignment with spirit, we are freed forever from the domination of greed.

Corporate greed requires consumers to satisfy its insatiable appetite. United consumers, those who shift their consumption to that which is truly needed, to that which supports the life of the planet, move the world into the new balance that awaits.

This is the collective action the world awaits now, and that cauldron of change is but steps away from completion. However, as Jan states in her blog, we must all address the ruling 1% within ourselves to be fully available to this much needed concerted collective action without. If our individual consumer demands don’t change, how can we join the 99% in collective action to change the world?

Every one of us has a 1% within, a ruling, dominant part that demands the lion’s share of our energy. That energy can take the form of money. How much of what we consume is truly in alignment with what we need? How often are we aligning our personal consuming with the nurturance and guidance of our sacred inner cauldron? What is really controlling us?

Is our spending out of control? Do we deepen our debt to feel better? Do we eat too much of the wrong things? Do we drink too much to calm ourselves, to free ourselves? Do we drug ourselves to soothe and escape? Do we deny ourselves to a fault, under the hidden greed of deprivation and control? Do we satiate our senses with Facebook, the greed of self-importance? The list is endless. What we’re searching for in this questioning exercise is that which has control over our decisions and actions, that which is not derived from inner knowing of what we truly need, which is: food from our sacred cauldron.

Our inner 1% must become a steward now to the true needs of the 99% within us, versus being allowed to be a taker of the energy of it for its own separate greedy agenda. The same premise holds true for the new cycle of life we are entering in the world. The 1% must become stewards to that which is truly needed by the 99%. Those who resist will simply lose their funding through loss of consumer demand.

This is the I Ching’s guidance for NOW—the time Before Completion. Do not attempt to force a new order until you’ve forged the cauldron, an attitude of sacred acquiescence to true need. This is the vessel that can sustain a new era beyond the revolution, beyond completion, into a world of sustained balance, nourished by the sacred food in the cauldron, resting in the temple of the ancestors, in the temple of the body, deep within the sacred self.

It is indeed a time to remain calm,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog, Quote for the Day

To Occupy: “Don’t Invest!”

October 16, 2011 Chuck Leave a comment

Yesterday, in a dream, I uncharacteristically was toying with investing in the stock market, something I’ve never done. I wasn’t really serious about it. Jeanne’s father, John, came to me. I knew he’d had experience with the market when he was alive, so I asked him for advice. He immediately and forcefully snapped at me: “Don’t invest!” Upon waking, I appreciated my time with John, but saw little relevance to our interaction.

Upon encountering my stepson in the kitchen I spontaneously blurted out, from some unknown place: “iPhone, therefore I am!” He assured me that I wasn’t very original. I thought I was quite clever but, with self-importance in check, I was nonetheless struck by the meaning of the words that had come through me.

Rene Descartes, contemplating how he knew he existed, came to his famous conclusion: “I think, therefore I am.” In our time, right now, “I” has become a collective identity. Technology and the human need for interconnection have merged into a new identity for this current generation. It knows it exists because of its interconnectedness. Indeed: iPhone, therefore I am!

When I connect the dots of these two experiences on the day of the burgeoning global Occupy movement, I come to the following message: I Phone—Don’t Invest! What does that mean?

I=the collective Occupy movement.

Phone=communicate as a mass united whole.

Don’t invest=use the power of the purse to force change.

It’s unity through interconnected communication that is creating revolution, bringing down governments. Turn that power now, as a mass, in a targeted way at the market. Don’t just Occupy Wall Street, rattle it through the power of the purse!

On Friday, with Apple’s release of the new iPhone, a mass ripple of commerce flowed through the market. Everywhere in the world people lined up to purchase their new phones.

Occupy has the power to send ripples, if not tidal waves, through the market by targeting a specific company or bank, by coordinating worldwide to boycott a store, a product, a bank, etc.

You have to hit a corporation where it hurts. The only language it understands and listens to is the bottom line.

Michael Moore says it well. It’s not about bringing down capitalism, but it is about restoring fairness and human decency. Corporate greed must be checked. This can no longer be accomplished through government. In one form or another the 1% own the government. But the 1% do need the 99% to buy their goods and services to stay in existence. This puts direct power to change the world in the hands of the people.

The worldwide Occupy movement may seem to be in a fledgling stage, but its intent touches the hearts of the masses who cannot march. There is majority sympathy with this minority movement. Bring the march of communication toward a targeted goal. Everyone can march this way.

It’s time to put the brain and tools to work. A targeted effort toward a specific corporation must be communicated on a mass scale. The message to the corporation: Make specific changes or we withdraw our support.

No laws broken, no one hurt, simply a market correction from the people, by the people, for the people.

If this resonates, please pass it on,
Chuck

Riverwalker Press