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.

On New Year’s Eve, Jan took me to a most unusual yoga class. The entire class focused on softening, just allowing the body to gently and slowly sink deeply into a few asanas. I found my body responding, awakening to an old memory of infinite release.

I first contemplated infinity as a young boy, daydreaming in a grammar school classroom. I reasoned, back then, that a small finite grain of sand was infinite because if you cut it in half, and then cut it again and again the process would never end, there would always be something to halve again. Of course, I realized that the instruments that would be needed to halve the diminishing grain probably did not exist, but this didn’t change the reality that infinity existed in the halving process.

With my body, it’s the same experience. I focus on an area and intend it to relax, release, or soften. Immediately it responds. As it arrives at its new place it presents a new sensation, or boundary, that is actually a new, albeit lesser, level of tension. If I keep my awareness on this new place and once again ask my body to release, off it goes, to a new place, half as tense as a moment before. This process could go on forever, if I could hold my awareness on it.

At the end of the yoga class, I mentioned to the teacher, Nicolas, how wonderful and effortless was the stretching. I was gently reprimanded for my use of the word stretching to describe the process. What he teaches is softening, no pressure or rigor applied to the muscles, simply a deepening of release, allowing the body to find its own way. In my experience, it’s keeping my awareness on the muscle, noticing its level of tension, and asking it to release. It seems always capable of softening to a new level of tension.

Ultimately, I experience this as a gateway to my energy body and infinity. At a certain point in the softening process my body, as a physical form, disappears, dissolving into sheer energy. For me, the sound of energy kicks in at that point, an almost deafening vibratory sound. It feels like an energetic massage and attunement. This is an opportunity to maintain awareness in a sheer energetic state of interconnectedness, awareness without a body.

What I am describing is an extremely pragmatic tool to access the energy body. Bringing your awareness innerly, by focusing on your physical body, sending it the intent to soften, again and again, is a gateway to infinity. It requires no books, no training, no money, simply the honing of awareness to the sensations of the body with the intent to go deeper and deeper into softening. This is a tool anyone can hone, at any time and any place, through a simple shift of awareness and intent. Try it!

As always, 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.

Students of meditation are well aware of the monkey mind, with its undisciplined, ADD, free-associative activity determined to derail any attempt to rein in its mental dominance of our energetic selves. Shamans have labeled the mind a foreign installation, seeing its alien energetic activity as frantic back and forth energy compared to the swirling circulative flow of the other vital energy centers of the body. One thing is certain, the mind is a conjurer, and left to its own devices it will monopolize our lives with thoughts that evoke all kinds of emotional activity that drain our vital energy. If we are ever to gain full possession of our energy to journey beyond the veils we must find a way to detach from the seductive control of the mighty conjurer, the mind.

Two dominant religious traditions, Buddhism and Christianity, offer images to address the challenge of the conjuring mind, each picturing a man and a tree. In Buddhism, Buddha sits utterly still beneath the bodhi tree as the conjurer floods him relentlessly with images beckoning his attachment. Similarly, Christ is utterly contained, nailed to his tree/cross as he detaches from his conjuring mind in his reconciliation with God. In mythology, Odysseus, like Christ, strapped himself to the tree/mast of his ship to refuse the call of the conjuring Sirens in order to survive his journey. These are dramatic examples of restraint from attachment to the conjurer’s offerings. Jeanne speaks more simply of detachment in the flow of everyday life. She coaches us to use our intent to refuse the conjurer by stating: “Don’t attach!”

I have found this practice extremely effective. There was a time when the conjurer could trap my energy in an obsessive mental process of worry as it projected countless scenarios that might possibly occur, some so frightening that they absolutely demanded attachment. Over time, I observed that almost none of these projected scenes ever came to fruition, though they might just as well have, given the emotional energy they had consumed. I also observed that when a real challenge presented itself I spontaneously handled it with no advance cognitive process. I eventually began to trust that I could count on my challenged self to act in my best interest and that the real trick was to empower that self with sufficient stored energy. The way to store energy was to cut off its depletion by not attaching to the incessant sales pitches of the conjurer. I learned to state my intent: Don’t attach! In the beginning, I’d state it incessantly, singing the don’t attach song, rapidly blocking the intensity of the conjurer’s intrusive thoughts. Today, I can state don’t attach, once or twice, and the thought and image disappear and calm emptiness is restored.

I agree with the shamans that the key is perseverance over time. The mind usually wins because it puts up a big fight in the short run and we are tempted to give up, give in, and simply feed its demand to perseverate. Defeated, we think: I really have to get back to learning to meditate. I suggest, keep it simple. You don’t have to sit still in a lotus position or strap yourself to a tree. Simply move along and state: Don’t attach! And, oh yes, then don’t attach to the outcome. In other words, suspend judgment, be persevering, and watch what happens!

As always, 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.

The interconnectedness of now presupposes a relationship among all who currently inhabit the world stage. Why have we all chosen to be part of this time, with the unique challenges and opportunities of now? I imagine that our various incarnations have perfectly fitted us to come together for this particular world play. As always, the Christmas vignette gives us pause to step out of role and acknowledge our deeper connection.

To awaken to our deeper reality while we perform, impeccably, our parts in the story of our time, is the real challenge and the real opportunity of now. We used to need the jolt of death to awaken us, where all that seemed so meaningful but a moment before dissolved under the impact of the lifting of the veils. However, in our time, in our play, we can awaken without death; we can jolt ourselves awake to perform in a truthful play.

We woke up to elect Obama. Then, we went back to sleep and he went back to sleep. He is slipping into the Clinton formula: pacify capital under the appearance of progress. We, the populous, sit in our seats, laughing or cringing, as we watch heavily funded and poorly-acted delusional skits of tea parties, town meetings, congressional speeches, Glenn Becks, and Sarah Palins. We listen to another speech to defend our freedom with fresh troops going to Afghanistan (or was it Iraq or Korea or Vietnam?) and simply yawn. I tell you, that play is so boring, so played out, it really is a dud. Nonetheless, Obama, Director, Commander-in-chief, has chosen not to alter the play.

It looks like capital will prevail with the health care bill as well, under the veil of reform, another dud. This play is quickly slipping into the old formula, but I don’t despair. We woke up to elect Obama and I think he will eventually wake up and direct an honest reality play. (Honest Abe is his role model after all.) That’s where I direct my energetic intent. That’s our collective challenge now: to direct our energetic intent to perform in a truthful reality play.

We must be impeccable in this intent in order to advance our evolutionary potential but, at the same time, we must remain detached. After all, it’s just a play. Whether you play the hero or the villain, when the gig is up you step out of role into new life, new causes, with new roles to play. Detachment, with impeccability of performance, keeps a foot in two worlds at once, allows for a lightness of being, as we unburden ourselves of the heaviness of getting too attached and too serious about this reality. After all, it is only a play. The real possibility of our time is to participate in a different reality play, a play without veils that aligns with the truth.

This is what our many journeys through infinity have led us all to. This is why we share the stage together at this time. We are challenged with a collective recapitulation. Can we face the real truths of history and unburden ourselves of the pain and lies that construct our phony plays? Can we lift the veils in this world and open to the greater world of energetic interconnectedness, wide awake?

I say, yes! I say, we are all performers in the hottest new hit on Broadway: The Great Awakening!

As always, 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.

I was named Charles at birth after my maternal grandfather, a powerful man of boundless energy and spirit. Charles was a successful banker, a self-made and self-educated man, a staunch Republican and capitalist. His energy and spirit live on in me but, from my earliest memories, I firmly rejected the heaviness and adultness of his name, Charles. I softened it to Chuck and have insisted upon that name to this day. What hasn’t escaped me, however, is the synchronicity of my adult life being driven by the discoveries and practices of two other “Charleses,” Carl Jung and Carlos Castaneda.

I was introduced to their works in my teenage years and they have never ceased to guide and inform my adult life. The intent of my life is truth. These two men shared that intent and paved the way for others to discover their own deepest truths. Recently, a reader told me that my writing was starting to lose her, as it favored too much the description of shamanic practices. This coincided with my opening Jung’s The Red Book, realizing that it was time to delve deeper into his journey. What I have come to realize is that my role in this life seems to be the integration of Carl and Carlos.

I remember a dear friend and prominent Jungian analyst once telling me that he had read Castaneda’s The Art of Dreaming and found it to be “worthless, total nonsense.” At that time I was already deeply immersed in the shamanic practices being offered by Carlos in Tensegrity workshops and was experiencing powerful new truths. This was not an intellectual affair nor was it the trickery of a charismatic shadow leader. This was personal experience, deep inner experience.

Today, as I pick up The Red Book, where Jung’s inner process is finally revealed, upon which the foundation of modern psychology rests, what we discover is a man talking to his soul, and, his soul talking back! This is not an intellectual affair nor a psychotic process, but a true journey of knowledge rooted in deep personal experience. This journey required “guts of steel,” as don Juan stated to Carlos, as the requirement for taking the shamanic journey to become “a man of knowledge.” Truly, Jung took the shamanic journey.

For me, the shamanic world and depth psychology are parallel paths to self-knowledge and evolution, each offering valuable tools for the journey. Yesterday, in Message # 617, Jeanne and Jan spoke of channeling and noted the similarity of guidance offered by many channeled entities. For those who channel, their lives are transformed by the guidance they are challenged to integrate, a true journey into another world. What we discover in Jung’s The Red Book is his own transformation, effected by his own channeled encounters with entities who proposed knowledge that he was compelled to explore and ultimately integrate into his understanding of the nature of reality. As we sat and watched the film Tuning In, I couldn’t help but note the entities use of “Jungian words,” such as shadow, synchronicity, and archetype. These were all concepts that emerged from Jung’s conversations with his soul.

Equally, the channelers speak of our ability to experience infinity, now. This is the shamanic journey, the tools of which require finding one’s energy body, fully achievable through the techniques that Carlos passed along in Magical Passes and that Carl introduced in the process of active imagination. Both Carl and Carlos insisted that real knowledge can only be achieved through a personal experiential process.

True to my namesakes, I engage in an experiential process and attempt to make accessible the valuable tools of both Carl and Carlos, in taking the inner journey. This inner journey is the most meaningful process anyone can undertake, as stressed by the channelers in Tuning In, in Jeanne’s messages, and by the expression of Jung’s inner work in The Red Book and by the works of Carlos Castaneda. If I were to characterize my synthesis of this week’s synchronicities, I would put it like this: Tuning In to The Red Book is The Art of Dreaming.

I close this blog with one final synchronicity. I open The Red Book to this quote on page 233:

“I am weary, my soul, my wandering has lasted too long, my search for myself outside of myself. Now I have gone through events and find you behind all of them. For I made discoveries on my erring through events, humanity, and the world. I found men. And you, my soul, I found again, first in images within men and then you yourself. I found you where I least expected you. You climbed out of a dark shaft.”

As always, 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