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Chuck’s Place: Just Passing Through—With Awareness

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“Do the sweeping breath Jan,” I suggested as we stared out at the ocean. “This is the last time we will ever be here. Take it in and release it.”

There is so much to this world, more than we can possibly experience in a lifetime. Better to be fully present, soaking it in and releasing it as we move along.

Only the energetic flow remains.

When we first arrived at the beach, we went to Edgar Cayce’s Atlantic University. We walked through the meditation gardens brimming with energy. We slowly walked the labyrinth in the heat of the noonday sun. Finally we sat in the coolness of the meditation room overlooking the sea, immediately drawn into the vortex of energy present in that room from all the beings who had preceded us.

Sometimes we are so moved by the beauty around us, drawn to the energy, that we immediately want to bottle it, to hold onto it. Before we left the beach I felt drawn to return to that meditation room, but it was time to leave, never to return.

We moved on to our cabin on the mountain. The moment we arrived we wanted another night, another attempt to bottle life. I called Chuck, the proprietor.

“Sorry Chuck,” he replied warmly, “I’d love to accommodate you, but it was just booked this morning.”

I knew, in that moment, that we were being reminded that we are beings who are going to die. Our stay here is but a limited engagement, no bargaining for more time. The message: Be fully present, fill your cup of experience to the brim, but don’t try to bottle life.

As I write these words, the sound of infinity—a thousand cicadas—wakes up. They announce: “Wake up! Take the journey NOW. Infinity is NOW!”

Before we arrived on the mountain we spent a night at a hot spring only to find a beautiful dead moth lying by the hot spring of life. When we came to our lovely cabin here on the mountain another beautiful moth lay dead on the floor by the jacuzzi. When we set out to hike the mountain we were greeted by the fallen wings of two luna moths resting on the trail, an energetic stream of movement. Signs of infinity: moths in repose and the energetic springs of life side by side. These are reminders to stay alert, remain aware, take nothing for granted, soak it in, release it and accept that we are just passing through.

With deep affection, I hold you in my awareness as I move along through infinite moments of awareness.

Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Discovering Intent

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Long ago, I was drawn to the adventures, practices and cognitive world of the Seers of Ancient Mexico. The energetic wave of that once closed world was reformatting to be of relevance to a new era as ushered in by the published works of Carlos Castaneda in the 1960s. The value of the tools from that ancient world are critical as we navigate our now rapidly changing world.

I have little use for words such as trust or belief unless they are based upon personal experience that supports them. At heart, I am a scientist. I cannot know something unless I know it through actual experience. Nonetheless, as Carlos Castaneda suggested in his thirtieth anniversary commentary in The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, our intellectual allegiance—what I would call resonance—sets off powerful undercurrents that effect a transformation in our perception and experience of life.

In simpler terms, concepts, even words themselves, can energetically transform us, but we must discover this for ourselves. What generally inhibits this transforming experience is the allegiances we bear based on our socialization.

If our socialization tells us that it is irrational to believe that stating our intent will lead to a major change, we simply won’t do it. In fact, we might instead spend our energy vigorously defending the absurdity of such a practice. From my own experience, however, I know that stating an intent is the most powerful tool of change.

When someone approaches me, in my formal role as an agent of change, we explore their intent to heal or change. I explain that that intent will manifest. It is not my intuitive powers that will guide the journey; my role is to track the energy of that intent. Intent is the guide.

Often my initial task is to ask my client to suspend judgement and experiment with this working hypothesis: everything they need they have within. Intent is now steering the process. Let’s gather the data and, like true scientists, see what happens.

The data comes in the form of synchronicities, dreams, encounters of everyday life, intuitions, thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, long forgotten experiences, etc. Everything is potentially meaningful; all is gathered and examined.

What we discover, over and over, is that intent is indeed an intelligent force that leads to its fulfillment. We cannot predetermine the course that journey will take; our challenge is to track it and stay on its unfolding trail unencumbered by doubt and worry.

Intent has proven to be the most valuable tool to effect deep healing and transformation. So simple, so accessible, but requiring of a truly scientific attitude of experimentation to discover: INTENT!

Calling intent,
Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Change

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To reincarnate or not?

I intend not to reincarnate into this world. The Buddhists recommend that those who hold this intent not wait until they find themselves in the Bardos as a departing soul to prepare for this challenge. They recommend that the intent not to reincarnate be the central focus of life while in this world. The Seers of Ancient Mexico similarly recommend that those who are intent upon taking their definitive journey into infinity, with awareness after death, make that intent the central focus of life in this world. How does this intent manifest in everyday life in this world? Through intimations to change.

Every time we refuse the call to change in this life we opt for reincarnation. Reincarnation, simply put, is the consequence of non-readiness to let go, to move on when it’s clearly time to do so.

Is this the road to change?

If a relationship has run its course, can we face that truth and end it? Can we give ourselves permission to release our grasp on a deeply familiar way of life, send our former traveling companion off with love, and move into new life?

When the call to recapitulate tugs at our bodies and psyches, beckoning us to awaken to deep truths we’ve pushed away for a lifetime, can we heed that call and acquiesce to the journey of the dark night of the soul? What we discover and experience on that journey will lead us into a different self as we put down the burdens we’ve carried that have kept us from entering life more deeply, more soulfully.

Can we allow for the changed world that appears when one we love departs this life? Can we release our hold on the physical presence of that being who once was the center of our lives? Can we open to the magic of a changed relationship, life and connection on new terms, and enter into a new world?

Is this the way?

Can we release ourselves from the obligations and expectations of roles that have long outlived their usefulness? Once we reach adulthood we are all equal beings responsible for discovering and meeting the challenges of our core reason for being in this world. The old roles of parent and child must be released to allow all to gather their full energy and take charge of their journeys. Can we release our parents, our children, ourselves?

Can we allow ourselves to fill our cups to the brim with experiences in this world, challenging ourselves to free our wounded innocence to love deeply without illusion? Can we live our illusions and release them when it’s time to move on?

Moving on?

Can we suspend judgment and feel compassion for even those possessed of brutality? Can we suspend judgment of ourselves and allow the awesomeness of this magical journey to course through our veins? Can we allow ourselves to be the magical beings we truly are?

These are some of the many faces of change that present themselves to us through the course of everyday life. These are the manifestations of the intent to evolve versus reincarnate.

What’s it gonna be, the red pill or the blue pill?

Taking the Red Eye,
Chuck

P.S. After I had read the early draft of this blog on Thursday morning to Jan, she happened to read the daily astrology reading for the day on PlanetWaves.net and sent me this link. Pretty cool synchronicity!

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Chuck’s Place: Shadow—Friend or Foe?

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At a gathering of student analysts eager for exactitude in definition, Jung, in an exasperated reaction, expressed that the shadow was simply the whole unconscious! If it’s not in the light, it’s in the shadow. And what lies in the darkness—that unknown part of ourselves—effects us profoundly, though we see it not.

In a dream, Jan and I are walking up a hill. It is night, dark and cloudy. Suddenly, I realize we are standing on slippery snow/ice and I lose my balance, falling, sliding down into the unknown, completely unable to see. I keep my composure but have no possible way to orient myself. I am truly in the shadow, without light. I awaken.

It’s the morning of June 21st, the summer solstice, Jeanne’s birthday. Jan has just emerged from a similar dream. Clearly, I am being shown that we are headed into the unknown—something that cannot be controlled. Can we get comfortable with the ride? Isn’t it really all preparation for the journey we all must inevitably take—our ultimate appointment with death? Isn’t it all about getting comfortable enough with the ride into the unknown so that we might find safe passage?

Isn’t it really our daily challenge to allow ourselves to go forward and grow, to become a new self as we integrate new truths of who we are into our lives? Or do we awaken stubbornly each day, insisting to reincarnate our familiar selves, grasping onto our familiar habitual attitudes and habits?

Jung resisted exactitude in definition because he respected the unknown and unknowable too much to assign anything more to a definition than a possibility or a metaphor. Rather than shirking scientific responsibility here, he was instead expressing scientific humility—a true scarcity in our modern world.

What Jung could hint about the shadow, however, was the compensatory function it served to balance our ego’s stranglehold over the unrealized or unconscious portion of the psyche.

In practical terms, if we consciously insist on attitudes or behaviors that thwart our deeper selves, the shadow will strike, as Freud observed, with verbal slips that reveal our heart’s true sentiment. In other instances, our shadow may have gathered enough steam to literally take possession of the ego as we find ourselves possessed by an intense mood or affect that takes control of our otherwise level behavior.

These states of possession can range from a profound depression to extreme acting out where ego control is literally obliterated. These are the extremes that lead us to fear the shadow, brand it as evil, and seek relief through a controlled life of goodness. Indeed, at an extreme state of imbalance the shadow might strike in an evil way.

On closer examination, however, we might discover that what we brand as evil—and may in fact be evil—is the compensatory action of the unknown part of ourselves, reacting to the falsity or limitation of our conscious attitude. Here, the shadow drives us to extremes to wake us up to grapple with other facts and truths within ourselves.

The more rigidly we cling to a one-sided attitude, the more intense must be the shadow’s counterattack to both balance us out and awaken us to introspection upon the truth of who we are, what we feel, and what we need.

Ultimately, the role of the shadow is to expand our consciousness by leading us into greater acquaintance with our unknown selves and our true reason for being in this life. We cannot, as my dream depicts, avoid our slide into the darkness, into the unknown.

Truthfully, what do we really know? What we think we really know is but the ego’s castles in the sand that, as Jan’s dream of Monday night depicts, will be washed away by the tidal wave of the shadow. The question that emerges in both of our dreams, and in the time of now, is: How we will take the slide or ride the inevitable waves of our lives?

Can we get calm in the midst of the unfamiliar? Are we open to discovering more of who we are as we glide into the unknown where even a compass doesn’t work?

Jung was wise to resist the exactitude of definition. Exactitude becomes another ego sand castle. However, Jung’s discovery of the mechanism of compensation provides a basis for relationship with our unknown selves.

Rather than get caught in the moralism of good and evil, or goodness and badness, we can suspend those judgments and shift to an appreciation for darkness as necessary to prod and challenge our ego self to broaden its purview into the vast unknown of the self with an attitude of respect and discovery.

In this respect, shadow is truly a friend yet also a foe that pushes us onward and keeps us honest.

Calm without a compass,
Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Present Without Props

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The female cohorts of Carlos Castaneda would laugh mysteriously as they described Carlos’s romance with knowledge. He would lie down and cover his body with books, literally absorbing knowledge through their many points of contact with his body. Carlos had released the prop that reading must happen through the eyes only; he suspended judgment and opened to new channels of learning within himself.

Oftentimes, during recapitulation, people begin to experience all kinds of physical sensations at different places inside and on the outside of their bodies. These sensations can be so unexpected and powerful that many times medical consultation is sought. Once cleared of medical etiology another possibility may be considered. Perhaps the sensation is an active communication of knowledge from some other point on the body self. Perhaps the recapitulation has opened the channels to knowledge that may have been stored by the body self some fifty years ago. Perhaps the body self is inviting us into the full knowledge of the experiences of our life lived through direct sensorial experience.

This is very often the case in recapitulation; a united effort by the body self to fill in the blanks in our memory of life already lived. This experience of recapitulation, whether intentionally sought or unintentionally triggered, asks us to drop the prop of our rationality that tells us that the body neither stores memory nor communicates independently of the mind.

How terrifying it can be to stay fully present and absorb this body of knowledge! The body generally “speaks” through direct sensorial experience that can range from pleasure to overwhelming pain. Often, if we allow ourselves to take the sensation journey with our body, channels may open to smells, temperature, and sounds, as well as triggering images, scenes, and eventually full movies of forgotten experience. The overall experience can range from subtle to riveting—the roller coaster of a lifetime.

Intimacy, in relationship, might also be defined as staying present without the props. How deeply might we allow ourselves to stare into each other’s eyes? How accepting might we be of sitting with each other, fully present, in utter silence? How long before the mind provides a thought to be discussed, a prop of distraction to create conversation, abstraction in place of presence? Can we not do the routines that have formed the crust and definition of our relationship—the props of habit—and open ourselves to new truths of who we are or who our partner is?

Finally, can we be fully present with ourselves, occupying the seat of the observer? Can we let go of the props of music or voice at the ear, computer or TV in the eye, food or drink in the mouth, book or cell phone in the hand?

Can we simply be present without judgment, unattached to thought, experiencing sensation and energy as it flows in the body? Can we notice the sound and vibration of energy? Can we allow it to deepen? Can we journey with it, uninterrupted by props?

Let’s see what happens!
Chuck