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Chuck’s Place: Who’s Yin and Who’s Yang? Whose Yin and Whose Yang?

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Vignette #1: Your Yang over My Yin

“What’s for dinner?”
“I haven’t really thought about it… maybe rice and some vegetables.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t seem very excited about that… what would you like? Would you prefer pasta?”
“That sounds great!”
“Okay.”

Vignette #2: My Yin over Your Yang

“I feel really calm and relaxed with you.”
“How ’bout we get naked?”
“That feels like such a disruption. I just wanted us to stay connected, go deeper into calm.”
“I was feeling for deeper connection as well.”
“I get that, but I’d have to get there… this feels so right now.”
“So, you don’t want that, it’s not natural… sounds like you’d be accommodating me. I certainly don’t want that.”
Silence.

In Vignette #1, Yin, the Receptive, awaits the impulse to action from Yang, the Creative. Once the Yang impulse is clearly defined, Yin springs to action and materializes the pasta. Though Yin had its own Yang idea, rice and vegetables, its dominant Yin nature pushed aside its own Yang impulse and fully embraced the outer Yang desire.

In Vignette #2, Yin was sinking deeply into its restful, restorative, dormant state. Yin invites outer Yang to join in still union. Yang suggests active union—creation. Yin calls upon its inner Yang to protect the legitimacy of still union. Outer Yang is defensive. It realizes that to acquiesce to Yin is the only possibility for union at this time.

Yin and Yang are the primal energies of this world. Yin is associated with water and earth, hence, energy in a denser form or simply solid energy. Yin energy is the substance of our material world: matter. Yin is the primal state of rest or stillness where energy is amassed and stored. In contrast, Yang is associated with fire and air. These elements lack substance. However, their influence creates definite movement. This is the ethereal, mental, spiritual activity that produces ideas, thoughts, designs, and actions. Yin, as the denser material energy, receives and gives form and substance to the impulse of Yang. If intent is Yang, then the physical realization of intent is Yin. In a deep state of Yin meditation, a Yang idea might be born.

We are all comprised of Yin and Yang energy. Often woman is associated with Yin and man with Yang. Men don’t produce eggs. Men have no womb. Men cannot hold and deliver life. But the tiny sperm that scratches the enormous egg is the impetus to action that the dormant egg awaits to begin the process of unfolding new life. This reality gives rise to the assignment of Yin and Yang to stereotyped sex roles. However, this is a misconception. For instance, all beings, male and female, require restoration and sleep to gather energy to live life. This is a Yin state that all partake in equally. Yang states of decision-making and creativity are equally utilized and necessary for both men and women.

To manifest (Yin) any thought (Yang) we must have energy. For water (Yin) to produce steam, energy, it must have fire (Yang) beneath it. If the fire is too weak Yin dominates and the water cannot boil to steam. If the fire is too great the water overflows the pot and puts out the fire, again, no energy produced. The only way to produce continuous energy is for these opposite elemental forces to be in balance, working together to produce the energy for life: the fire burning at a low, steady flame, the water simmering gently.

Balance, however, does not mean always being equally dominant. At night, the sun acquiesces to the moon. In the day, the moon acquiesces to the sun. Together, each taking the lead in succession, they create the deeper balance of our world—night and day.

We do well to assess the interplay of our inner Yin and Yang energy states. Often, we favor either Yin or Yang. Bringing these energies into internal balance is the key to outer relational success. You can be certain that your non-dominant primal energy state will show up in your choice of partner. If you choose a partner of similar dominance, something will be missing in your relationship. If you are Yin dominant you will be attracted to a Yang dominant partner and vice versa. This has nothing to do with your biological sex. Men and women may be dominated by either Yin or Yang energy.

Yin and Yang are mutually dependent. If we are favoring one state inwardly, we will seek to balance it out in outer relationship. This does not necessarily mean that we’ll find harmony in relationship. For instance, if we feverishly reject our inner Yin in favor of our inner Yang, we are certain to battle our Yin dominated partner. If we’ve had difficulty accessing our inner Yin or Yang, we are likely to become overly dependent on our partner who gives us a connection to our missing inner energy. Dependency often creates strife in relationship. As depicted in the opening vignette, we might easily dismiss our budding but inferior inner energy in favor of the whim of our dominant partner.

The first question to answer in relationship is: Who’s Yin and Who’s Yang? Knowing this, you can examine the patterns in your relationship that are driven by both the oppositional and complementary interaction of these energetic forces. From here, you can also answer the question: Whose Yin and Whose Yang might be dominating inside the self and outside in the relationship?Examining the Yin and Yang of relationship from an energetic standpoint, allows for a deeper understanding of self and other beyond blame. Yin and Yang are opposite sides of the same coin, inseparable and necessary in all life.

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: The Midas Touch of Intent

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I intend a change. Midway through the night, I am suddenly awoken. Outside sounds abound around me. I am captive; they will not let me return to sleep. For hours they exhaust me. All I can do is breathe, breathe into deep relaxation.

The next day, I am present, but a step behind the action. My intuition, ordinarily my guiding light, is shut down. The world moves at its normal pace, but all I can do is watch it unfold as I fumble for words and meaning. I meet extraordinary challenges in the day. I notice an exhausted, detached calm.

The next night, I dream I am at the Grammys. I sit next to Bob Dylan. From his seat he delivers an acceptance speech for the Lifetime Achievement Award. He rambles on, monotone, almost incoherent, like he’s talking to himself. Someone from behind, with a long wooden pole, tries to poke Bob, to make him shut up. I protect him by deflecting the pole. He deserves respect.

In another dream, I’m in a large lake at night. I’m swimming. A huge oceanlike wave is approaching. I dive through it, only it doesn’t pass, it engulfs. I realize it’s a tidal wave. I’m now well beneath the surface. I do seem to be able to breathe. I’m not overwhelmed by fear, but it does feel like death is imminent.

More and different challenges appear the next day in waking life. Encounters coalesce around the theme central to my intent. It’s clear I am being softened, made malleable, as intent pulls me forward, pushing me to experience a much deeper level of groundedness and detachment.

The next night, in a dream, a Chinese man translates the soup choices on the menu at a restaurant. I choose the soup called: “A Light Between a Rock and a Hard Place.” Something has shifted; light can now pass through where once I was caught, between a rock and a hard place.

This series of events, which occurred in different states of my multidimensional self—dream body, physical body, social body—were all different ripples of the same intent, synchronistically related. This is the Midas Touch of Intent. Once the universe engages our intent, like Midas with his golden touch, intent turns everything in our path into gold; everything becomes the substance of our intent. You simply can’t get away from it. Everything, indeed, becomes meaningful and is tied to the intent of our intent.

On the first night, after I set my intent, intent awoke me and refused to allow me to sleep. It was as if the Sirens had me under their spell, all I could do was relax my body. This physical experience shut down my intuitive function and rendered me a therapist without vision. In the dream with Bob Dylan, I sought to protect the icon that deserved respect, but the truth is, it was time for new life: change. This is the time of revolution. The old kings must now die to usher in a new era. Jan informed me the next day that an Indie band from Canada called Arcade Fire, had won the Album of the Year Award at the Grammys. Like Bob Dylan, I too had to let go of the old self to make room for the new.

In the next dream, a tidal wave, like Noah’s flood, swept away the old and ushered in the new. There was nothing I could do but breathe and go with the flow, into the unknown. Finally, I experienced a new self, my intent realized, a new life, where once life was frozen between a rock and a hard place.

Jeanne cautions us to be careful of what we ask for when we set an intent. She suggests we be specific, but also be prepared, as the path intent chooses to realize our intent may not be as we expect. Midas might have been wise to choose a more careful intent so that he would have been able to eat his food, rather than have it all turn to gold when he touched it!

Intent will ripple through all the dimensions of the self. At first, the meaning of events may elude us; sometimes we are simply in the grip of the experience and need to allow ourselves to be led along. What choice do we really have, once we are in it?

Suspend judgment. Go with the flow. At some point you will arrive at the shore of a new self, intent realized, and marvel at the magical journey that brought you there.

Bon Voyage!

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: 2012 is Now!

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“I am convinced that for man to survive now, his perception must change at its social base,” states don Juan Matus on page 3 in The Art of Dreaming. For don Juan this change, an evolution of consciousness, means that we must embrace the wholeness of our beings, a world of energy, the wavelength self I wrote about in last week’s blog.

Stanislav Grof points out in an interview with nonsoloanima TV that the end of the Mayan calendar at the winter solstice, December 21st next year, simply represents the end of a cycle of time. This cycle is the completion of the sun’s rotation around the solar system upon which the Mayan calendar is based. This completed cycle in galactic astrology results in an alignment that births a new era. However, all birth is preceded by labor. This labor can manifest as aggression, destruction, or violent revolution as new life struggles to be born. In addition, there must be a death, or ending to the old way of being, to bring forth new life. The question for mankind is whether this birthing process will result in the necessary evolution don Juan describes, or will the forces of resistance put an end to our human experiment.

Grof also points out that December 21, 2012 is but the apex of a bell curve. The changes of 2012 have been rapidly unfolding for decades. Undoubtedly, the birth of rock and roll in the 1950s followed by the psychedelics of the 1960s was the unleashing of the energy needed to move masses of humanity to shift into a deeper search for themselves, at more profound levels. In fact, for decades this mass shift in consciousness has launched a major revolution to bring down the solid precepts that have governed awareness for centuries.

Energetic mass movements, such as the Internet, are rapidly tearing down all attempts to maintain or create walls of illusion. Facebook, though I decry its dark side of self-importance and its exposure to the greedy marketing giants, can probably be credited with bringing down the government in Egypt as the energy of change was initially directed by postings on Facebook, telling people where to gather for the nonviolent revolution. The election of Obama, also largely orchestrated through digital wizardry, marked an earlier magical evolutionary advance of consciousness, materially realized.

The energy of 2012 has been advancing for decades and we are clearly near the climax of this struggle. Stepping, for a moment, out of time and viewing ourselves from a cosmic perspective, we are indeed living in a highly charged, agitated energetic time. The speed of change appears greater than our human ability to absorb and indeed this is probably true, hence, the pressure to evolve into out greater energetic selves. Whether this revolutionary energy is sufficient to push through the birth canal and bring forth this necessary transformation into new life is still an open question. The forces of resistance undermining change, so apparent in Obama’s presidency, are evident everywhere on the globe. We are not a world of individual countries and governments, despite those illusory walls. We are now an interconnected global economy where the special interests of the parasitic few are relentlessly seeking new ways to spin reality to hold onto power and control.

Bringing this challenge down to a very individual level, we do well to inventory the status of the power monger within ourselves: the inflated ego with its rationality über alles. Are we taking on the challenge of allowing ourselves to claim the fullness of our energetic beings? What is the status of our own inner revolution, our own transformational journey of rebirth? Are we allowing ourselves the opportunities to wake up in our dreams and explore our greater consciousness beyond the body, or does rationality still dismiss the possibility? Do we allow ourselves to go inward in meditation, or do we choose medication and/or materialism? Do we free our breath, or remain constricted in the rigid body armor of defense? Do we open up to the world of energy by engaging our intent, or do we remain frozen in doubt?

I say, Viva La Revolución! But remember, revolution starts at home, within the self, by embracing the depths of our energetic selves. The revolution of 2012 is now! Let’s all fight for that necessary change at our social base; let’s insure our survival as evolved energetic beings!

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: The Reality of Reality

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I awaken. An abundance of dream traces compete for attention. I have been in many dreams, many worlds. Calmly, I reach for pen, journal, and light, trying desperately to hold onto the images. This is not possible. With the light I consolidate into my solid self, my ego takes over and the bulk of the night’s journeys are erased from memory. This world, the “real world,” dominates the mind, as it begins to categorize, define, and judge what’s left of the myriad of the night’s adventures.

Quantum physicists might parallel this experience of waking from dreams with a mysterious phenomenon that occurs at the quantum level of reality called: the collapse of the wavefunction. When a very small particle—which is a minute building block of everything in our world, including our physical bodies— is observed, it presents as a solid object. When that same particle is not observed, it behaves as a wave—that is, a spread-out form of energy that is in many places at once.

A wave can approach a building and go through several windows at the same time, and yet, if a scientist peeks at it while it is doing so, it suddenly collapses into a localized single particle that only goes through one window. The rest of the wave disappears. Sheer quantum magic!

The parallel I draw here between awakening from a dream state to consciousness, and collapse of the wavefunction, is similar to the collapse of our energy selves, as we go from spread-out energy beings, capable of living in many parallel states or dream worlds simultaneously, into a single solid ego being. With the dawn of the awakening ego self comes the collapse of the broad energetic self with all its multitudinous lives, in many dreams, suddenly collapsing into the consolidated solid self of this world.

This world of solid objects presents as the only real world and, yet, quantum physicists know, for a fact, that at a subatomic level it only becomes solid when it is looked at; otherwise it’s a spread-out world of energy. The solid world we inhabit is real, but it is only a frozen moment upon the vast energetic underpinnings of who we are. At the deepest level, we are—all of us—like the result of a pebble being tossed into a pond: the energetic concentric circles that form outwardly; vast waves of interconnected energy.

But for now, let us examine that frozen moment. So, what is the reality of the collapsed wavelength, the solid ego self? The magic is its ability to generate and maintain a cohesive world, completely independent of its underlying broader nature. However, to pull this off requires a major ego inflation. That is, the belief that we are all that there is, that we are the masters of everything, we are discrete independent objects, disconnected from everything around us. This is solid illusion! Objectively speaking, this construction is an act of hubris and a crime against reality. Underneath it all, the ego feels and knows it is not on solid ground, and it is frightened.

As I was writing the draft of this blog, I checked my office messages. A voice that did not identify itself nor leave a phone number, asked the question: “What can lead to a sudden shift, a sudden loss of self-worth or self-esteem?” The answer is: getting pulled into the feeling experience of the true nature of the ego’s position: alienated and disconnected. Feelingwise, all egos feel a deep underlying sense of dread, aloneness, badness, unworthiness, and inadequacy. This is objective truth and, hence, appropriate. In fact, life in our solid world predisposes us to a bi-polar experience. In some moments we need to inflate—act as if we are solidly grounded—and at other moments compensate this by experiencing dips in self-worth or extended moments of depression, as we sink into the emotional quicksand of our not so solid foundations.

If we can live as solid objects but acquiesce to the truth of our underlying wave status, we can bypass being consumed by, or staying attached to, these negative feelings. If we can admit we are inadequate and isolated, not because we are bad, but because it is the necessary objective consequence of being a solid, we can free ourselves of the responsibility of having caused our state of inadequacy. As solid beings we are simply unable to feel and know our full selves as interconnected to everything. So, don’t take it personally. And indeed, as Carlos Castaneda continually stresses: Suspend judgment! If we don’t get identified with the ego’s unrelenting judgments of self and others we open up access to our broader wavelength selves.

I operate in this solid world, every day, from a wavelength perspective. I know that, at some level, even if I’m not allowed “to peek” that everything is energy. I know that energy is interconnected and everywhere at once. These are the waves, the ripples on the pond of the multidimensional self. And I watch, constantly, for the ripples of energy upon the surface, in the form of synchronicities.

Synchronicity is evidence of our total interconnectedness. Each day, I watch in awe, as those ripples of meaning surface in succession, as I move through my encounters of the day and help others examine the meanings of the events in their lives. Everything is meaningful.

I am utterly compelled now to write of the latest ripple, an example of synchronicity that has just happened and has been weaving itself, over the past few days, into every facet of writing this blog, appearing over and over again. Two nights ago, Jan shared an old dream with me where, despite being wounded and bleeding from the hip, she was totally preoccupied by a giant praying mantis pecking away at her skull. This dream mirrored the initiation of her recapitulation. We had been discussing synchronicity when she shared the dream, which had its own synchronicity embedded in it.

The next day, the book, The Adventure of Self-Discovery, by Stanislav Grof, which I had ordered, arrived in the mail. At random, I opened the book to page 152 where Grof was describing a synchronicity that Joseph Campbell had relayed at a seminar. Campbell says: “…We happen to live in New York City, on the fourteenth floor in an apartment on Waverly Place and Sixth Avenue. The last thing you would expect to see in New York City is a praying mantis. The praying mantis plays the role of the hero in the Bushman folklore. I was reading the Bushman mythology—all about the praying mantis. The room in which I was doing this reading has two windows; one window faces up Sixth Avenue, the other window face toward the Hudson river. This is the window I look out of all the time; the window on Sixth Avenue, I do not think I have opened more than twice during the forty-odd years we have lived there.

I was reading about the praying mantis—the hero—and suddenly I felt an impulse to open the window facing Sixth Avenue. I opened the window and looked out to the right and there was a praying mantis walking up the building. He was there, right on the rim of my window! …He looked at me and his face looked just like a Bushman’s face.”

Later that evening, I sat with Jan on the couch and read her this quote. As we talked a small bright green insect with long wings, very much looking like a miniature praying mantis, was crawling on the lampshade behind my head as I read!

Finally, as I sat next to Jan on another couch this morning, finishing the draft of this blog, and just as I am writing about the praying mantis experience, Jan interrupts me. She has been researching the raven in mythology after her recent experiences of the raven. In Animal Speak by Ted Andrews, on pages 187-8, he says: “The raven has a wealth of myth and lore surrounding it. In many ways it is comparable to the coyote tales of the plains Indians, the Bushman tales of the mantis and other societies in which an animal plays both a significant and confusing role. The coyote was both trickster and wise being—fool and wise one. This was true of the mantis in the tales of the Kalahari Bushmen.”

Sheer quantum magic!

I close with an interaction between Carlos Castaneda and the quantum shaman himself, don Juan, over a discussion about solid and energetic reality. In The Art of Dreaming on page 4, Carlos writes:

“I can’t conceive the world in any other way, don Juan,” I complained. “It is unquestionably a world of objects. To prove it, all we have to do is bump into them.”

“Of course it’s a world of objects. We are not arguing that.” (don Juan speaking.)

“What are you saying then?“

“I am saying that this is first a world of energy; then it’s a world of objects. If we don’t start with the premise that it is a world of energy, we’ll never be able to perceive energy directly. We’ll always be stopped by the physical certainty of what you’ve just pointed out: the hardness of objects.”

And so, there is reality and then there is reality.

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Beyond Belief

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“Do you believe in God?” asks John Freeman of Carl Jung in a 1959 BBC interview.

“Now?” asks Jung. “Difficult to answer… I know… I don’t need to believe… I know.”

“What is the practical importance of the out-of-body experience?” asks an Italian interviewer of William Buhlman, prominent out-of-body explorer, researcher, and author, in April 2008.

“The most important thing about an out-of-body experience is the ability to obtain answers… the ability to go beyond beliefs… the out-of-body experience gives people the opportunity to verify their own immortality,” replies William Buhlman.

The out-of-body experience (OBE) is the experience of consciousness separate and apart from the physical body. This experience is most frequently first encountered in a dream state when awareness is suddenly awoken by a sensation of intense vibration that leads to the separation of consciousness from the physical body. Frequently, people report floating up from or rolling out of their physical bodies, which remain asleep and frozen, in a state of paralysis. This emergence from the body is experienced as still being contained in the body, however its movements are dictated by thought versus physical action. The shamans call this the energy body and others call it the astral or ethereal body.

This awakening to one’s energy body is experienced spontaneously by most people at some point in their dreaming life. Don Juan suggested that the experience of the self as energy, the dormant energy body, is a potential available to all, simply waiting to be called into action.

The initial reaction to an OBE can range from terror to exhilaration. My own reaction to my youthful OBE was very similar to Robert Monroe’s, a pioneer in OBE exploration in America. I feared death, as did he, and I feared a brain tumor, as did he. Like Monroe, I was cleared of tumors after neurological brain scans, and also discovered that I wasn’t going to die, however, in the absence of more knowledge I remained terrified. In contrast, as Monroe states, in a 1992 interview at his institute in Virginia, he had the benefit of a discussion with a psychologist friend who informed him that his experience would be quite normal in India. He suggested that Monroe move to India and study under a guru in an ashram for ten to twenty years to hone his skills in OBE. Though Monroe was not prepared to leave his wife, child and business for a decade or two, he obtained the knowledge that his experience was not abnormal and began his own Western exploration of OBE.

In fact, the knowledge and experience of life beyond the body is highly refined in Eastern systems of yoga and Buddhism, as well as in shamanic cultures both East and West. This has been Carlos Castaneda’s greatest contribution to our time: awakening all of us to the equal opportunity to find our energy bodies and answer for ourselves questions of immortality and life beyond the body.

There are many roads to awakening the energy body and beginning a personal exploration of infinity: trauma, sleep deprivation, drug use, yoga, meditation, holotropic breathing, Tensegrity, hypnosis, channeling, prayer, fasting, creative dreaming, near death experience—in fact, the list may be endless.

In my experience, intent is all you really need. Intend to find your energy body. Intend often; it will happen. What stands in the way for most people is the rational mind. “I don’t believe in an energy body,” the mind will say. My response, “Good! Beliefs are useless.”

Be a scientist, find out through your own personal experiment. Suspend judgment, like any true scientist. Set up your experiment. Intend your energy body, gently, persistently, every day, for weeks. Then, see what happens!

See what questions you might begin to answer through your own personal experiences and knowing.

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

NOTE: All cited interviews are available on YouTube. Click on the links: Carl Jung, William Buhlman, Robert Monroe. You can also read about Chuck’s experience in The Book of Us, p. 5 or in this Chuck’s Place Blog.