Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences!

This week Jeanne introduced the “Nanny Goat,” who holds in check the evolving spirit, leaving the self feeling like an inferior worthless child, destined to life imprisonment. Who is this nanny goat, and how do we loosen her grip so that we might obtain our rightful pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?

The alchemists undertook this process quite concretely, attempting to purify matter through a series of complex chemical operations to arrive at gold. They knew, however, that the adept, who performed these operations, needed to be in spiritual resonance with the chemical process. In other words, they had to do the inner work to free their spirit from the clutches of the nanny goat. Furthermore, they had to submit to a lengthy process; they knew there were no shortcuts.

Jung recognized that the alchemists were projecting the contents of their own psyche onto matter, thereby clarifying, differentiating, and transforming their inner experiences. Jung proposed a psychology that identified psychic structures, or inner players. These structures competed and interacted with an individual’s emerging consciousness, seeking to be included in experiences of life. He called these players, archetypes, and they could be both positive and negative forces. Jung would identify the nanny goat as the dark side of a parental archetype, hovering over the struggling child who is seeking to emerge as a confident being, to stand on its own, and find its rightful place in the world. For Jung, it is the challenge of the ego to become the hero who can separate itself from the powerful grip of the nanny goat, individuating into a solid, separate being. Jung, like the alchemists, saw this as a long-term process, requiring patience and perseverance; a process he called psychotherapy.

Another school of psychotherapists, the object relationists, focused more on the child’s internalization of parental relationships. Melanie Klein went so far as to suggest it all began with the breast. There were two, the good breast and the bad breast. In other words, sometimes needs were met, sometimes they were frustrated. The balance of met and unmet needs, or which aspect dominated, determines the quality of parental introjects (internalized parental structures). Is one dominated by the critical, rejecting, controlling, undermining nanny goat, or the benevolent parent who supports and gently urges toward independence; cheering on one’s unfolding powers? Like Jung, the object relationists require a lengthy psychotherapeutic process to free oneself of the dominance of the nanny goat.

The shamans approach this dilemma through another metaphor. In the shaman’s description, we human beings are subjected to onslaughts from energetic entities, seeking to feed off our energy. To achieve this they utilize our minds, keeping us obsessed with self-doubt and fears of annihilation, leading to endless energetic spikes in our emotionality, which they find positively delectable. Here the nanny goat is an entity, parasitically attached to our human form, sucking our blood, feasting off our many varieties of depressions, phobias, obsessions, and desires. Shamans have their own set of practices, called the warrior’s way, which they use to free their energy from alien entities. The major focus of the warrior’s way is physical. When practiced regularly these physical movements and intentions succeed in neutralizing the machinations of the mind, releasing the nanny goat.

The Buddhists are equally untrusting of the mind. They prescribe their own set of “alchemical processes” for purifying the mind of the influences of illusion by practicing years of meditation, leading to detachment. Deep Buddhist practice incorporates three to ten year meditative retreats to free one from the clutches of the nanny goat.

All of these paths, and many more, are valid interpretations of our energetic reality. The path itself does not matter. After all, everything is energy and there are many ways to define the same energetic reality and to find the inner pot of gold. It remains for the individual to choose the path that personally resonates. However, all of these approaches have common features:

1. There are no shortcuts. If we expect a quick defeat of the nanny goat, we remain in its grasp.

2. The adept, ego, child, apprentice, hero, etc. must solve the challenge. Although there is support and guidance, freedom must be individually achieved.

3. The nanny goat is not personal. As Jeanne suggests, it is a boring, repetitive other, which needs to be disengaged from.

Investing in our adult self, finding calm, and choosing the practices that gradually fortify this adult position will eventually lead to the nanny goat moving on to new pastures, no longer finding sustenance in our evolving energy field. But beware, the nanny goat may return, when you least expect it. Don’t get caught in thinking you have failed. It’s only a test. Don’t attach!

Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences!

My name is Chuck Ketchel, and I am a being who is going to die. In the shamanic world of Carlos Castaneda, practitioners introduce themselves in this manner, reminding themselves, each day, of their limited time in this world. With awareness fixed on the reality of death, shamans approach each moment knowing full well it might be their last. This gaze opens the door to heightened awareness, seeing beyond the veils of illusion. Shamans constantly condition their energy bodies for their definitive journey into infinity, transcending reincarnation.

Buddha spoke of impermanence in much the same way that the shamans speak of death. For Buddha, our greatest challenge in this world is to free ourselves of attachment to illusions. What he meant by this is our incessant wish for things to stay the same, our grasping to hold onto permanence in our lives. We cherish our families, our homes, our loved ones, our possessions. We cherish youth. We don’t want anything to change. We desperately seek to hold onto life in this world. Our obsessions with health, disease, and cures, reflect our deepest wish to cling to life in our bodies in an unchanging world. For Buddha, this is why we suffer. We cling to an illusion of permanence, which shields us from entry into the greater reality of enlightenment. Hence, we must reincarnate until fully prepared to let go of our illusory props.

In her messages, Jeanne focuses on evolution. In fact, death, impermanence, and evolution are all equivalents. She has us focus on the subtle, as well as the dramatic events in our current lives. Whether it be an ice storm, a snow storm, a change of season, the collapse of a financial system, or entry into a new stage of life, we are constantly being prompted to awaken to change, and to evolve with full awareness.

Each day, we are challenged by changes that offer us the opportunity to let go, to detach, to die of an old way, and enter a new world. This is how we condition our energetic beings to develop fluidity, the ability to travel in infinity, without attachment to illusions. With fluidity, detachment becomes the ultimate expression of love. To allow oneself to be fully open to another, but equally willing to flow with the changes, unburdened of needy requirements, is living in free-flowing truth.

When Jeanne left this world, she invited me to continue to travel with her, in infinity. Since that time, I have entered and left several worlds. My capacity to experience deeper love has required me, and continues to challenge me, to let go of everything familiar, with an unattached heart, completely open.

If we allow ourselves to evolve in this world, we are already in alignment with the flow of infinity, flowing with death, into new life, each day.

Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences!

No songs today. Last night, in a dream, someone I respect very much was ardently flipping through the pages of my personal journal, to my extreme discomfort. What might he discover? The dream, on one level, points to the topic that has been churning in me all week, sharing the awareness log, which I now use as the format for my own journaling. For years, I have kept journals as a reflective tool, focused on events which have already happened and my activity in them. My current focus is greeting the meaning of events in real time. And so, today’s message is guided by such a greeting in a dream.

Jeanne has proposed that everything is meaningful. This proposition takes synchronicity to the ultimate extreme, essentially viewing all the unfolding events of oncoming time as meaningfully related to the soul’s journey. The soul’s decision to incarnate in this world presupposes its intent to enter the dense energy region of earth school to participate in a needed challenge for its evolution. Based on our soul’s original intent, we can understand the families we are born into and the specific circumstances of our lives, as the manifestation of a necessary context within which to encounter the required challenge. Understanding our life from this perspective frees us from victimhood, alternatively viewing our challenges as necessary, personally tailored stepping stones to our evolution. Furthermore, we are then able to align our conscious intent to evolve with our soul’s original intent, which allows us to more clearly view the synchronicities of oncoming time as signs, clues, and guideposts to our evolution.

I offer the following practice to support this approach. Begin an awareness log. Divide the pages of your journal into three columns. In the first column, note the events of oncoming time that catch your attention in any form, as they are encountered. An odd meeting, encounter, phone call, sighting, etc.; the possibilities are endless. Don’t get obsessive or overwhelmed. Just note a few. Use the criteria or reaction, “Wow, that was weird!” as your guide.

In the second column, freely associate to the event as you would to an object or event in a dream. Note what spontaneously emerges in your conscious mind as you focus your awareness upon it. Do not over think; allow for spontaneous, unthought associations. To think is to engage the ego, which will lead you down ego paths and to ego conclusions, which will choke out the language of synchronicity. If nothing comes, set it aside, offering it to your unconscious, asking it to lead you to meaning through its own processes, such as, a fixation on a word, or a song, or a person, which exposes the missing association. This process might actually coincide with the illumination of the meaning of the synchronistic event.

The final column is reserved for the illumination, that AHA! moment, which may come long after the synchronistic event. However, it may shed significant light on the decisions and actions of the current moment. With practice, our ability to decode the synchronistic guidance can occur instantly, becoming the true guide in our lives. This will come as the ego acquiesces, impeccably, to its true purpose, which is to ascertain and take action in accordance with the soul’s intent to evolve. Once the ego adopts this stance of being in alignment with the soul’s intent, the full scope of guidance being presented synchronistically can be appreciated. We are treated to a powerful connection with this constant companion, our soul.

My message today is my gesture of acquiescence to my own soul’s urging. My intent is to offer a tool to appreciate life as a waking dream, filled with golden messages, awaiting our awareness.

Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences!

We open with Abraxas, on vinyl, well-worn scratchiness, like a mature wine, no skips, as Carlos Santana leads us into the fog and the sensuous brew of Black Magic Woman. Sit back as Santana’s guitar suspends time.

Don Juan said that modern sorcerers are indebted to their ancient ancestors for all their knowledge. The distinguishing factor between present day and ancient sorcerers is their intent. The ancients were drawn to the machinations of power and control, over themselves and others. Some of these ancient shamans still walk among us today, in human form; so obsessed are they with elongating their ability to remain present in this world. In contrast, the proclivity of modern sorcerers is total freedom, to explore and live in infinity, devoid of the trappings of power. In shamanic terms, the ancient sorcerers learned how to shift their assemblage points, whereby they were able to manipulate their energy to enter other worlds and perform stupendous feats of power. They became intoxicated and obsessed with this power, which trapped their awareness. They chose to attach their awareness to obtaining and exercising magical powers, rather than evolving beyond the trappings of that power.

That same fixation of awareness on greed and power has been the controlling position of our own stunted world consciousness. We now find ourselves imploding, as the structures of that greed are rapidly tumbling, as the machinations of the captains of industry are laid bare before us. Despite the all-knowing rational economic pundits, who would have us believe we are simply in the midst of a correction, and that the eternal structure of capital and market are safe and sound, the truth is: it’s over.

Our world is in the midst of breakdown and transformation. In shamanic terms, we are stalking a new position of the assemblage point. However, at this point, we are simply entering a phase of free falling. (The following chorus is from the Tom Petty song, Free Falling.)

Free fallin’, now I’m a, free fallin’,
now I’m aFree fallin’,
now I’m a, free fallin’, now I’m a

As we float along now, timelessness appears before us on the world stage. We see carpetbaggers approaching Congress now with their wily deals. The seas are sporting pirates. A dark man of the future was elected to lead the world. Yes, we are all free falling.

The world’s journey of awareness, long interrupted by its fixation on greed, now resumes. The way of greed has been lived to its ultimate completion, thanks to the amazing chutzpah of George Bush. We are now freed to finally move on, as all the truths are being revealed. However, the world of responsible citizens must recapitulate and own these truths, while the ancient captains attempt to reassert the veils of their illusions. Abraxas, the god of good and evil, must be acknowledged in its totality.

It’s time to stalk a new reality, one that aligns with the truth. We are one world, an interdependent unit. Listen to the true intent in this stanza from Bob Marley’s, One Love, freed of the commercialism of the Jamaican tourism board:

One Love! What about the one heart? One Heart!
What about – ? Let’s get together and feel all right
As it was in the beginning (One Love!);
So shall it be in the end (One Heart!),
All right!
Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right;
Let’s get together and feel all right.

We are now in the position of the modern sorcerers, available to journey without attachment to power, since there is nothing left to attach to but the truth, and right action, which aligns with it. The boring veils of illusion are rapidly dropping. We are now on a journey where the only security, the only insurance policy, is to be steered by the truth.

On an individual level, we must ask ourselves: Why am I alive at this time? Why have I chosen to participate in this most amazing time of transformation on earth? Just as the world must become a well-integrated unit, with the intent to survive, so must I discover and integrate all my parts, to become a being capable of continuing my journey in infinity. Let’s continue that journey of awareness together.

Until we meet again,
Chuck

Welcome to Chuck’s Place, where Chuck Ketchel expresses his thoughts, insights, and experiences! We open first with Jimmy Cliff reverently stirring our souls with Many Rivers To Cross.

Many rivers to cross
But i can’t seem to find my way over
Wandering i’m lost
As i travel along the white cliffs of dover

Many rivers to cross
And it’s only my will that keeps me alive
I’ve been ripped, washed up for years
And i merely survive because of my pride

And this loneliness won’t leave me alone
It’s such a drag to be on your own
My women left me but she wouldn’t say why
Guess i’ll just break right down and cry

Many rivers to cross
But just where to begin
I’m playing for time
There’ve been times i find myself
Thinking of committing some terrible crime

Still this loneliness won’t leave me alone
It’s such a drag to be on your own
My girl left me but she wouldn’t say why
Guess i’ll just break right down and cry

Many rivers to cross
But i can’t seem to find my way over
Wandering i am lost
As i travel along the white cliffs of dover

Many rivers to cross
And it’s only my will that keeps me alive
I’ve been ripped, washed up for years
And i merely survive because of my pride

For three years prior to our wedding night, Jeanne and I had had sex hundreds of times, however, as I mentioned in The Book of Us, it was not until that night that the tide of orgasm swept over her ego controls in monumental release. That experience had indeed been prepared for through countless efforts, but for Jeanne it was the ritual of matrimony that enabled this dramatic transformation. Transformation means literally, a new formation. In energetic terms, a new circuit is created. Energy can flow in new ways. In Jungian terms, the deep power of the collective unconscious benevolently overwhelms and reshapes the personality in a numinous experience. In shamanic terms, we discover how to shift the assemblage point and enter a different world. We can gain access to, or remain in, that world at will. In effect, we learn to merge our worlds by dropping a veil: all worlds are one.

In ancient societies, the tracks of ritual were deeply laid for all to traverse at major life transitions. Some transitions were forced and violent. Pubescent rites of passage, in many tribes, required boys to be stolen from their family homes in the night by the village men who then physically mutilated them through circumcision and other forms of painful torture. Undergoing these rites ushered these young boys into adulthood, never to be returned to their family homes. They entered a new world, energetically transformed.

The youth in our modern world remain largely uninitiated. The ancient practices have long since receded deeply into the collective unconscious, where they may be encountered as symbolic dreams beckoning transformation. Physically, our youth undergo and display tattoos and piercings, undoubtedly and unknowingly drawn by these stirrings of the collective unconscious. They seek desperately to discover and experience these ancient energetic pathways by breaking down ego control, with its constraints of rationality, through journeys with alcohol and psychedelics. There are many casualties in those journeys, as hidden behind those elixirs are entities that seek bondage, forever feeding off the energy of the would-be initiate, now frozen in addiction.

How do we help our youth cross this river to adulthood in our deregulated world, currently in a state of collapse? After Reagan, the forces of greed were unleashed to feast upon the “youth market.” Cartoons became the vehicle to manipulate children’s needs by attaching them to products in the market. Families would, ultimately, break down, forced to work more and more, as the forces of greed found cheaper slave labor throughout the world to replace an honest wage in America. Phony wars, like Vietnam and Iraq, have led to deep distrust by the youth of an adult world’s ability to legitimately help them cross the river to adulthood through military service. An adult world, which lacks integrity, has to be rejected.

This is the opportunity that President-elect Barack Obama presents. The youth are galvanized by this man. Something deep within them senses integrity. Barack Obama must now re-regulate society. This means creating structures of integrity to allow life to move forward. Obama speaks of service for the youth. I view this as potential new initiatory channels, based on right action. The youth will submit to initiation in an adult world they can trust.

Rituals do not guarantee transformation. Sometimes only part of the self makes it across the bridge over the river. There are many river crossings, where we are offered the opportunity to retrieve all parts of the self. I have had many dreams in my life where midway across the bridge the river rises, washes out the bridge, and I am forced to turn back. Sometimes we are stuck between worlds and we must undertake the ritual of recapitulation to affect a crossing.

Life itself, the ultimate tidal wave, forces us into adult roles, whether we are really ready or not. And so we perform like chameleons, with the deepest truths concealed: that we are mostly pretending and that our deepest needs go unsatisfied. What to do? The shamans suggest that our greatest challenge is to overcome self pity and self doubt. They suggest that our attachment to those habits upholds a familiar, constricted, comfortably uncomfortable self. This in itself, they contend, is a magical act, molding the body through repetitive physical actions, constructing a world to inhabit. Essentially, we physically encase those beliefs and walk the earth in movements that reinforce that world. The shamans suggest that we stalk a new self, that we play the ultimate game of dress up, acting as if with conviction, thoroughness, and most of all, persistence. This can be translated as creating our own rituals, or practicing, with devotion, ancient rituals that have heart or resonance. Be thorough and disciplined in your practice, without attachment to the outcome and yet, with certainty, that at the right moment you will be transformed.

One of my own moments of transformation, also mentioned in The Book of Us, came at my initiation into the “clan of hunters,” in the sea of Jamaica. I sheepishly and foolishly shot many spears, as many fish amusingly swam away from my youthful uncertainty. But, I continued to return to the sea. One day, the alignment happened. The world stopped. I merged with my fish, which lay still, awaiting my spear, and I was initiated into a new world. And yes, I had to suffer a deep physical wound in this altered state. From then on, I lived the ways of the hunter, rarely missing; shooting with sobriety and deliberation, only what I needed.

The world now is undergoing a period of collapse, reformation, and transformation, as we seek to discover the pathways to the true wellsprings of life. On a collective level, we need adult leadership, founded on integrity and right action, to re-regulate genuine access to those wellsprings of life and allow for needed transformation.

To personally prepare for transformation, we can stalk our needed changes by performing the necessary preparatory actions, impeccably, and with persistence. We perform these actions with a calm certainty that at a definite moment, which we cannot predict, a deep alignment will kick in, and transformation will occur, as we are swept across the river into a new world. We are calm Riverwalkers walking with awareness, awaiting the crossing.

Until we meet again,
Chuck