Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences! Many of the shamanic and psychological terms used in Chuck’s essays are defined in Tools & Definitions on our Psychotherapy website.

I wrote this blog on Friday morning as Jan sat next to me and channeled Jeanne’s Message #565. Jan and I are always struck by the magic of synchronicity, as Jeanne’s themes are reflected in my own flow of thoughts. Perhaps calling my thoughts my own is a bit presumptuous!

It’s hard for me to sink into Jung’s works without becoming completely enchanted with the depths of his discoveries. Suddenly, everywhere I look I see with clarity (I think!), the pearls of wisdom he illuminated. I have encountered critiques of Jung from well-established authorities in the field of psychology who consider his exhaustive studies of alchemy of little contribution to the needs of modern life, in fact, a complete waste of time.

As I see it, the major problem of our modern psychology is the focus, in one form or another, on ego psychology. Rationality has become the one true God of our time. Connection with that God means the ability to actualize our goals, satisfy our needs, and find fulfillment in love, career, and family in this life. Modern psychology researches the brain, seeking techniques and drugs to manipulate and maximize its beneficial functioning to serve the fulfillment of the ego’s reasonable goals. Isn’t that, after all, the meaning of life?!

Jung, on the other hand, was a deeply spiritual man. Though the son of generations of Protestant preachers, he experienced no value in dogma or Christianity as it was espoused and practiced. For Jung, Christianity’s handling of the dark side of God left mankind helpless in reconciling the dark side of his own nature and left him constantly at war, projecting evil upon, and seeking to eradicate it from, his neighbor. Jung explored the depths of what it means to be human, taking on the challenge of becoming conscious, and reconciling the oppositions within human nature.

In one of Jung’s early dreams he saw the heavens opening up, dropping excrement upon the towering spires of the church. This dream represented both God’s attitude toward the one-sidedness of the church as well as offered the missing ingredient to its wholeness, the dark side. This dream was the foreshadowing of his life’s work and its parallel to alchemy. Jung’s opus, like the alchemist’s, was to begin with the black substance, the nigredo, which, buried deep within, contains the jewel. Jung termed this transformational process, individuation: the individual’s journey to claim his or her true, real, whole self and, in that process, union with God within.

Jung’s psychology is a far cry from ego psychology with its limited aims. For Jung the purpose of life is to fully discover and embrace the totality of the self, to find completion in wholeness. In his own encounters with his own guides, who were ancient alchemists, in a process he called active imagination, Jung was led into the laboratories of those ancient masters and shown the secret practices of the adepts as they subjected the nigredo to a series of chemical processes to arrive at their gold. Jung realized that through the psychological function of projection these alchemists were undergoing the processes of individuation that led to wholeness. He studied these processes, with their deep transformational qualities, and recognized their relevance to depth psychological treatment. This was his gift to us: resurrecting the spiritual wisdom and transformational practices of the alchemists for our modern times.

I am struck by the parallel contributions of Carl Jung and Carlos Castaneda in this respect, as both have left us the benefits of ancient wisdom and practices in a format applicable and usable in our time. However, as don Juan cautioned, pursuing sorcery (or alchemy or individuation) requires guts of steel. It is not an intellectual road or one to be pursued out of curiosity, though they can lead you to the doorstep. Herein lies the reason for the secrecy of the alchemists: only the worthy may enter the laboratory. Worthiness, not in terms of ego achievements, but in a readiness to leave behind the world of judgments, that both torture us yet comfort us, by keeping us securely nestled in the womb of a known life, a world we can function in, however wounded and insecure we are.

The adept knows he is inadequate. It is a fact. The adept knows that no amount of ego psychology or brain manipulation will change that fact. Inadequacy, incompleteness, is the reason to take the journey into the unknown. We all begin as nigredo. We cannot evolve to enlightenment if we can’t embrace the truth of where we are and what we are, at every stage.

Furthermore, we cannot experience true transformation without a genuine experience of God, magic, infinity, etc… Call it what you will. This isn’t about belief; it’s about experience. Depth psychology subjects the ego to a series of processes to prepare it for its experience of transformation, in communion with God within. Ego psychology can only prepare the ego to commune with the limits of the God of reason; no transformation here, merely inflation supported by constructs and chemicals.

Which path do we choose to follow, the path of power (the ego) or the path of spirit? Jung gave us dreams, active imagination, and a humble ego seeking wholeness. Carlos gave us Tensegrity, with its own dreams and recapitulation. Jeanne gives us guides, signs, and energy. All of these practices are practices, if practiced, that offer the possibility of completion, wholeness, and infinity, now!

As usual, should anyone wish to write, I can be reached at: chuck@riverwalkerpress.com or feel free to post a comment.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences! Many of the shamanic and psychological terms used in Chuck’s essays are defined in Tools & Definitions on our Psychotherapy website.

For me, as a young boy, the election of John F. Kennedy represented the possibility of real change. His election ushered in the dream of the sixties, a possibility fully realized now with the election of Barack Obama. Kennedy brothers John and Robert were early martyrs of the winds of change. I was struck with awe last night, as I listened in tears to all the accomplishments of their brother Edward who was left to manifest the dream through concrete actions.

As I watched speaker after speaker, in rapid succession, share their heartfelt anecdotes I noticed that even at this solemn occasion we were afforded not a moment to catch our breaths and feel the fullness of our inner reactions to the stories being told. I am reminded of Jung’s comments in a letter to his wife a century ago on his own trip to Boston. “Our time is dreadfully crammed. The Americans are real masters at that; they hardly leave one time to catch ones breath…I am looking forward enormously to getting back to the sea again, where the overstimulated psyche can recover in the presence of that infinite peace and spaciousness. Here one is in an almost constant whirlwind.”* Four days later in another letter he reflects: “As far as technological culture is concerned, we lag miles behind America. But all that is frightfully costly and already carries the germ of the end in itself.”**

That germ of the end Jung intuited I see matured in our all-encompassing need for technology to provide us with instant connection. In my own informal survey I see more drivers on cell phones than not. When I walk the streets I observe at least fifty percent of people, either alone or accompanied by others, on cell phones. The burning need for instant connection has made even voice mail obsolete as texting, whether driving or not, has supplanted listening to “ancient” messages. This obsession with connection has deeply disconnected us from the fullness of our selves. We are alienated from our dreams, from our natures, from our deepest selves, which we are left to encounter in fragmented projected rapid-fire moments in the outer world as we stop not to listen to our beleaguered inner voices.

This is the value of Jeanne’s message. Hers is the call to turn inward, to discover and trust the inner self, the truest traveling companion for this journey. She coaches as well in the art of connection through accessing our selves as energy beings, interconnected in a world of energy.

This, I believe, is the next step in the realization of the dream: the inward turn and the experience of energetic interconnectedness. Let us view our technological gems as symbols of our spiritual longing and answer instead the inner call for connection. Like the Kennedys, we are charged with making what appears impossible a possible dream.

As usual, should anyone wish to write, I can be reached at: chuck@riverwalkerpress.com or feel free to post a comment.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

* C. G. Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections p. 367-368.
**Ibid: p. 368.

Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences! Many of the shamanic and psychological terms used in Chuck’s essays are defined in Tools & Definitions on our Psychotherapy website.

In the flow of everyday life we encounter countless opportunities to spend our energy, a virtual walk through the mall. The merchants surround us in the outer world as well as beckon from within. Each merchant has a sales pitch. Some are extremely enticing and clever, while others are downright seductive and hypnotic. Our challenge is to continually emerge from the hypnotic spells cast from both without and within and stay steady consumers of the truth. This is detachment in action.

Awakening in the night, I am greeted by the Merchant of Offense: a landlord is screwing me out of a security deposit. This merchant entices my energy to explode in anger, constructing a powerful vignette, inviting obsession and an inability to return to sleep. Tossing and turning, I am further enticed to feel sorry for myself, to be frustrated in perpetual victimland. I pause in my restlessness and ponder: Where have I known this landlord before? Have I ever been in the place of taking what is not mine, or of trying to hide from the truth, rationalizing an action to benefit myself? Yes, I can clearly own that landlord’s actions in myself.

I can feel compassion for his fear that he must take what isn’t his in order to feel safe. There is nothing to forgive. I have not been wronged. It is not about me. I can be thankful to be reminded of a place I have been and perhaps am still, at times, tempted to occupy. I can withdraw here the projection of shadow with its compulsive energy fixation. We are no different; I become energetically indifferent, neutral.

Everything within me is outside of me as well. Infinity is within and without. I need not exclude anything I encounter from residing in me. And so, I have compassion for the landlord consumed with greed. I will take the available actions to challenge his behavior, but I invest no energy in the outcome. What is important is that I meet the challenge, consume the truth, and align with right action. However, I release myself completely from an energetic construction that beckons me to attach: “I have been screwed. I can’t allow this…blah, blah, blah…” Instead, I am appreciative for this opportunity to hone my awareness and stay present to greet oncoming time.

I pull my energy back into calmness, preparing to return to sleep. I detach my energy from a draining construction of reality, which could consume the rest of the night and much of the following day. I am thankful for this opportunity to know myself better. I return to sleep and rejuvenation, preparing for the energetic lessons of a new day. But first, I toss and turn a few more times in my humanness!

As usual, should anyone wish to write, I can be reached at: chuck@riverwalkerpress.com

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences! Many of the shamanic and psychological terms used in Chuck’s essays are defined in Tools & Definitions on our Psychotherapy website.

Recently, in my quest to ascertain the overriding archetype of now, the I Ching presented me with Hexagram #36: Darkening of the Light. This hexagram is built, at its base, with the trigram of fire encapsulated by the trigram of the mountain, hence, the hexagram depicts fire within the mountain, light surrounded on all sides by darkness.

The interplay of these trigrams reflects this time of year, as we approach summer’s end. The zenith of the sun’s power on one day, June 21st, has long since past, as, slowly but surely, darkness encroaches upon the duration of light in each day. Internally, our creative energies stir, seeking release and life before they must retreat deep into the psyche, like all seeds requiring long germination, until they are born anew in the spring. We approach the time of universal SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder, the time of natural depression, as potential life sinks into the earth where it must await the proper time for its return.

What is critical in the time of darkening of the light is an attitude of acquiescence to the inevitable. The I Ching teaches that the Prince of Darkness ascends to absolute power in this time. The only recourse for the Prince of Light is to retreat deep within the self, hiding its light, attracting no unnecessary attention, remaining inwardly protective of the truth. This inward resolve requires intense perseverance as outer conditions turn unfavorable to its expression. This is not a time to take on battles with evil directly.

When we look at the energetic dynamics currently erupting on our national stage we see the synchronistic reverberation of darkening of the light. President Obama has advanced the cause of health care reform in America, a necessity so obvious and right that I waste no time here in its defense. We see daily the archetypal armies of the Prince of Darkness seizing any opportunity to consume all the light of goodness and rightness of Obama’s intent. In this context, the Prince of Darkness employs the cloak of greed, enlisting corporate sponsors, Republican extremists, and the Christian Right to advance his cause: total consumption of the light.

These attacks are not rational arguments being advanced to challenge the President. They are irrational frenzied energies that have slumbered in the collective unconscious, awaiting their opportunity to slip into life. They found their opening with the health care debate. They come armed with hate, rage, and, sometimes, guns to the battleground of town hall meetings, with the goal of annihilation. They bring symbols of National Socialism: swastikas, and Hitler’s mustache imposed upon Obama’s image, as well as an onslaught of inciting propaganda. What we see before us is a people possessed by archetypal energies that seek to exterminate: wipe out the good and the light.

We live in times of deep depression and deflation of our national pride as we face the ruins created by the former administration and the truths revealed by the present administration. In some ways, our American depression can be compared to Germany following World War I, the very conditions that gave rise to the archetypal evil perpetrated by Hitler as he sought to inflate the value of the German “volk”, rather than face the true reality of Germany’s inferior position. In fact, a nation in ruins needs to slowly and soberly find its appropriate place in the world. The Prince of Darkness is seeking a similar opening in the American psyche, denying the reality of our truths, seeking instead to maintain the notion of “America über alles.”

The cadres of the Prince of Darkness project evil and darkness upon Obama, a man of color. In fact, Obama reigns as the Prince of Light, maintaining the candle of truth amidst the prevailing darkness. Unfortunately, America’s tolerance for the sober truth is undercut by its characteristic childish desire for instant relief. This is where the Prince of Darkness preys upon the collective American psyche and weakens its needed perseverance and tolerance for the slow wheel of necessary change.

Through Obama’s brilliant management of the crisis in the auto industry we now have GM introducing the Chevy Volt on the near horizon. A volt is an energetic measurement. The introduction of the Volt is the beginning of a long awaited energetic shift. The electric car, which has been suppressed for decades to ensure our dependence on the oil industry, is finally being born. Obama has cleared the way for this emergence through demanding change. All car companies will follow suit. In a few years, even the Prius may be viewed as a gas guzzler. Despite Obama’s obvious progress, the Prince of Darkness continues to prey upon our demanding American baby that deserves it all, now!

The I Ching counsels the absolute necessity to go inward and hold firmly to one’s truth in the time of darkening of the light. This is the same advice the shamans give when confronting one’s petty tyrant. The shamans appreciate the time of darkness as the time to remold oneself by disengaging from the grip of the baby, with its self importance, soberly observing the real facts at hand, taking right action. In practical terms this means not engaging the irrational insanity of the energy being unleashed at town hall meetings. Such restraint is difficult because of the assault to reason these protesters bring. It’s not personal and to engage this irrationality directly would result in being consumed by it, either through annihilation or by becoming possessed by the same rageful energy in an attempt to combat it. This restraint requires not attaching to victimhood. The trick is to hold onto the truth, advance it when possible, and not get caught in the web of anger, battling the Prince of Darkness on his terms, which are irrational, incitant fury and rage. Ultimately, the challenge is to hold onto one’s light, with tenacity and the clear knowledge that the time of darkening of light will pass, and that the conditions for the Prince of Light to emerge victoriously will return.

Now is not the time to exhaust oneself in a battle with the archetypal energies of the Prince of Darkness. In fact, the I Ching points out that evil can only be sustained through feeding upon the light. If the light retreats, the evil energy loses its sustenance.

The shamans counsel that the flyer entities, or the Prince of Darkness, constantly feast upon our energy by engaging us in all sorts of emotional entanglements, which all boil down to affronts to our self-importance. We can use these entities to help us lose our self-importance by retreating from the trap of feeling offended: victimhood. In this way, we maintain our true light, protecting it from unnecessary traps, as we patiently and perseveringly await the time of darkening of the light to pass, as we reemerge, at the right time, our light guiding the way to new life.

As usual, should anyone wish to write, I can be reached at: chuck@riverwalkerpress.com

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences! Many of the shamanic and psychological terms used in Chuck’s essays are defined in Tools & Definitions on our Psychotherapy website.

It was don Juan’s contention that what human beings crave more than anything else is the experience of exploration beyond the narrow confines of the everyday world. From a clinical perspective the shaman’s would diagnosis boredom as the core mental health disease in this world.

All of our spiritual endeavors, be they mainstream or alternative, are attempts to shift beyond our rational fixation and experience magic: worlds within our world, worlds beyond our world. All addictions are similar attempts to experience life from a different perspective, to enter the magic. The trouble with addictions is the small print of this Faustian contract. The entity that grants us access to the magic forever holds the keys and we become its slaves, selling our energetic souls for a few moments of release.

In the area of relationship, the experience of falling in love transforms the mundane into the exceptional, another magical world. So powerful is the energetic transformation of “twitterpation” that, despite its transitoriness and lack of relational foundation, we go for it again and again, hook, line and sinker. Today with our technological wizardry there is no end to new possibilities for connection as we twitter, facebook, share, and match in abstract worlds that conquer the limits of space and time. The challenge of the web is its web. We must be careful not to get caught in giving over to this medium our inner ability to access other worlds. The world wide web can become another addiction, another Faustian permutation. We Americans are deeply challenged by this easy access as it so readily serves our dominant extroverted culture and makes it increasingly difficult to be satisfied with our aloneness and solitude.

The shamans discovered that the practice of recapitulation secures, for the individual, inner access to the magic. Every time we relive an earlier experience in our lives we are practicing entering another world, through our own volition. In this current moment I return to an apartment I once lived in. I feel the textures of the floor, of a golden cover on a pool table in the living room. I am seeing Jeanne in her slender long black dress, radiant. I move throughout the rooms encountering the furniture, the feel of the walls, the colors, as I gently move my head from side to side, breathing the recapitulation breath. I feel the mood of that apartment as I slowly encounter every detail.

Now, as I return to this world, I have experienced a minor shift of my assemblage point, having entered that prior world. The more we practice recapitulation, the more we learn how to volitionally shift into other worlds. The shamans suggest that, along with intent, recapitulation further enhances our dreaming abilities. In dreaming, our assemblage points are naturally dislodged, available to transport us into whole new worlds. Through recapitulation we sharpen our ability to become lucid and take charge of these journeys in infinity. The more we recapitulate, the more we enhance our ability to make these magical shifts in our waking life as well.

Recapitulation is a very pragmatic tool, available to everyone, in any moment, to begin the journey into the magic, satisfying our deepest needs to access our hidden potential, overcoming the disease of boredom. Try it!

As usual, should anyone wish to write, I can be reached at: chuck@riverwalkerpress.com

Until we meet again,
Chuck