All posts by Chuck

Chuck’s Place: The Way Of The Mandala

The Way…
-Illustration © 2022 Jan Ketchel

The appearance of a penny on the street in a dream is a healing trail marker. Follow that coin! A four-sided rectangle, a box, or simply the number four showing up in waking life, or dream, may be another communication from our High Soul that we are involved with something that furthers our intrinsic unfolding of Self.

The circle and the square, separate or in combination, form a mandala,  the archetype of wholeness. Our individual mandala blueprint, at the core of our Soul, attracts to us the raw material circumstances and relationships needed to fully realize our wholeness in this life. The mandala archetype is the central organizing archetype for all life.

Jung pointed out that the primary atom for all organic life is carbon, whose outermost ring has a valence of four electrons that form the chemical bonds to create the basic building materials of life. Thus, at the material level of existence, the mandala is the central organizing blue print for physical life.

Our inner mandala, operating at the spiritual dimension of our life, accentuates activities we are engaged in, with synchronicities or images of mandalas, as suggested in the dream images mentioned above, when we are heading in the right direction or when we need a course correction in our decisions and behaviors.

Sometimes a broken, messy, round public toilet of a mandala appears in a dream. In this case, we are shown that our path to wholeness requires that we face that which we seek to flush away and be rid of. Our mandala of wholeness forces us to face that which humiliates us, as it refuses to allow us the release of repression. The mandala will insist that we claim and own all of our wholeness, regardless of how bad it smells!

The precursor to the number four, on the number line, is three, which, as a geometric image, forms a triangle. A triangle has integrity but is a volatile energetic force of change, like the Bermuda Triangle.

In the shamanic lineage of Carlos Castaneda, the leader, or Nagual, was always a human being with four energetic compartments, until Carlos came along. Though he was pointed out as the next Nagual, he had only three energetic compartments, foreshadowing the coming of great change for his shamanic line.

In fact, Carlos ended his shamanic line’s traditional transmission of knowledge to simply a new generation of selected leaders and apprentices. Instead, he unwrapped the secret, sacred technologies of his lineage and freely offered them to anyone interested in learning them. In Carlos’ new world, everyone needs to become their own personal shaman, taking the soul retrieval journey of their lifetime.

Carlos correctly read the energy of the need for total transparency as our evolutionary destiny. The days of the witch hunt and the need to hide shamanic knowledge from the Conquistadores has ended. The modern era needs all the sacred knowledge of yesteryear to correctly navigate the profound changes of our time.

Carlos’ decision allowed me access to the practice of recapitulation, with its ancient shamanic roots, as a complement to the use of EMDR in modern psychotherapy in the treatment of PTSD. Carlos, with his energetic configuration of three, freed ancient shamanic wisdom, allowing it to find new manifestations in the healing of our world.

The number three seeks its mandalic completion. The Christian male God triangle of Father, Son and Holy Spirit points to the need for Mary, as Goddess, to square its mandala. The struggle to achieve this configuration, in many spheres, is the story of our time.

The Catholic Feast of the Assumption never granted Mary true Godly status. The best it could do was offer Mary continued existence in physical form in heaven. The masculine gods of our time continue to devalue, control and exploit the feminine.

The feminine, in the energetic manifestation of the energies of Kali and Isis, are agents of change, using nature and climate change to point humanity toward squaring the mandala, with the inclusion of the feminine principles of relatedness and interconnectedness, to restore order and balance to the world.

Masculine and feminine energies are present in all life. Jung called the feminine energetic compartment in men the anima and the masculine energetic compartment in women, the animus . As individuals, we are all tasked with squaring the mandalas within ourselves by integrating these primal masculine and feminine energies within our own psyches into fruitful evolution.

Women can be animus dominated and as devaluing of the feminine as abusive, controlling men. Men can be anima dominated, overwhelmed by moods and resentments that dominate impulsive decisions.

All people are charged to follow the way of the mandala now, as it seeks resolution, inwardly and outwardly, in true integrated wholeness.

Tracking the Mandala,

Chuck

Chuck’s Place: Earth’s Holotropic Emergence

Emergence is healing…
-Illustration © 2022 Jan Ketchel

The term holotropic was coined by Stan Grof to depict the energetic movement toward wholeness, which is active at the transpersonal dimension of the human psyche.

Stan and Christina Grof chose the term Spiritual Emergency to describe the impact of  those holotropic energies upon our lives when we are in deep personal crisis. Emergence and emergency share the same Latin root, emergere, meaning bring to light, the cornerstone of healing.

Planet Earth’s present crises are, at their core, manifestations of holotropic emergence. Confusing are the primordial mother goddess Kali’s destructive winds and fits of irrational tantrums as agents of healing, but the illusions that have governed us inwardly and outwardly must be brought to light before the seeds of truth and needed change can be planted and bear fruit.

Inwardly, we must contend with the governance of ego soul, which is shaped by the values of materialistic achievement, dominance, and world view. Reason and powerful defense are its primary preoccupations.

The truths of ego soul’s disavowed wholeness, housed in the depths of the transpersonal unconscious and physical body, generate disease and chaos to shatter the repressive grip of misaligned ego soul. This is Spiritual Emergency breaking down ego soul’s delusions.

How often our dominating materialistic perspective finds us in the emergency room or under the psychiatrist’s medicating wand, as we misread the symptoms of true emergence, asking to bring truths into the light. Of course, we must always address impacts made upon the physical body and material reality, but all crises should also be considered to be the action of holotropic emergence, replete with its healing intent.

Outwardly we are dancing with apocalypse, truly playing Russian Roulette. The thrill of this vicarious brush with absolute power is both addictive and fated to be lived out. Ego soul must test its limits. Inflatedly delusional leaders, who entrance us with their dares, are the actors chosen for this ultimate showdown.

However, we must all assume responsibility as energetic players in this collective drama. We must own the authoritarian dominance of the ego soul, to the detriment of discovering and living our wholeness, as well as our materialistic bias that justifies and maintains the mismanagement of our bodies and the Earth. Through owning and reconciling with our blind spots and disavowed shadows, we are freed to open up to real love.

Reaching the place of real love is the true intent of Earth’s current spiritual emergence. However, to arrive at love, we must experience its fatal blows, as it prepares us to receive it. Mother Nature is rapidly destroying the bounty of her food and shelter. She triggers our reaction of denial and greed, which she meets with even greater conflagration.

Her true motive is to provide us the sobering experience we need to humble our inflated ego souls and align with the greater truth of our interdependent oneness. We must freely choose to come together, and not destroy ourselves. Guides, helpers and saviors cannot rescue us; ego must truly grow up to the truth. Love is a verb that requires maturity to become active.

From the true home of our holographic oneness every individual impacts and is a voting member of our world drama. Every decision and action in our individual lives, particularly the owning and reckoning with our personal shadow selves, is a vote for real love, the next stage of Earth’s spiritual emergence.

May we reach the critical mass needed to advance to love, as we  journey through nature’s pitiless onslaughts, plowing the fields for love’s planting and bearing of fruit.

Remain positive in the knowing that meeting one’s own spiritual emergence with open arms advances our continued collective dream of life on Mother Earth.

Emerging,
Chuck

Chuck’s Place: Perfection Is Wholeness

Find wholeness in all things…
-Illustration © 2022 Jan Ketchel

Perfection is wholeness. Wholeness is the four-sided mandala: 4 directions, 4 seasons, 4 stages of life, etc. Winter is pregnancy. Spring is birth. Summer is fulfillment. Fall is death.

The decay of Fall provides the seeds and nourishment for new life, as the life cycle completes itself and begins anew. Nature teaches, in this most basic way, that life feeds upon life. The shamans of ancient Mexico called our world a predatory universe, not as a judgment but as nature’s destructive truth.

Evil is branded the demon, and it may present as such, but it is a necessary part of the life cycle, a fundamental part of our wholeness. Archetypes are the primal patterns that generate the life cycle. Archetypes populate the deepest level of the human unconscious, what Jung called the collective unconscious.

Joseph Campbell realized that in world mythology, which personifies the  organizing influence of the archetypes upon human behavior, the hero archetype has a thousand faces. Local cultures thus dress the core archetypes in local clothing and masks, but beneath the surface all the different variations can be reduced to the same universal archetypes.

Despite the culture or religion, the hero is always sacrificed, changes form, and is born again into new life. Once again, nature’s fallen resurrects in the new life of Spring.

Archetypes insist on being propitiated. We must appease their energetic imperatives or suffer the agonizing consequences of their wrath.  For example, depression is often the withdrawal of life energy by a neglected archetype. If we refuse a rite of Spring, like Daphne our life might harden into a frozen tree.

Modern humanity has forgotten its natural roots. The animal has been confined to the darkness of the basement, in the area of the psyche Jung called the shadow. While humanity luxuriates in its advanced technology, the animal in the shadow plans its escape into life. Here’s how Jung described the ravaged animal’s escape in Nazi Germany:

“Like the rest of the world, [the Germans] did not understand wherein Hitler‘s significance lay, that he symbolized something in every individual. He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody‘s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.” *

Projection of one’s disowned self onto a political leader renders one the sacrificial victim of a wrathful archetype. Victimhood is experienced as both the ecstasy of the entranced and the rage and hate of the rationally disenchanted. In both cases one is drawn into emotional bondage by the archetype.

In either case, the truly disenfranchised is both the personal and collective shadow, the neglected animal and the natural world, the Earth. This is a universal collective problem for humankind, not simply an issue of polarization.

The archetype of the shadow is just that, that which lives in the darkness.  This is both the truth of our disowned lives, as well as the archetype of our unlived wholeness. To propitiate the shadow, we must bring the light of our consciousness into the darkness and discover the fullness of who we are.

In waking life, our journeys into darkness require us to own and release the intensity of our emotions in a safe place. Beyond release is the full knowing and acceptance of all we have done, light and dark. Finally, the darkness will reveal the changes we must make to align ourselves with our wholeness.

If we can suffer the Fall, reveling in its final colorful act, and have the patience of a pregnant Winter, new life will surely arrive, to be nourished in the Spring and brought to fulfillment in Summer, as the life cycle perfects its wholeness.

Seeking perfection,
Chuck

*Jung, C. G. (1946). Fight with the Shadow. In The Collected Works of C.G. Jung (Vol. 10). Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Chuck’s Place: Close Your Eyes To Projection

Discovering royalty within…
– Illustration © 2022 Jan Ketchel

Our attention and emotional excitement are drawn outwardly to events that show us our very personal drama within. Our inner director is so stupendous, we hardly realize that our outer fascination is directed from  the depths of our own psyche, as it seeks to captivate the attention of our consciousness.

So held in the grip are we by certain events upon the world stage that it seems impossible to believe that they are actually reflecting something quite personal within our own selves. The movie we are drawn to see might be our own personal shadow play, or it may reflect the seismic stirrings at the deeper, unconscious level of our collective Soul life.

To discover the source, close your eyes and ask your Soul to reveal the source of your attraction, fascination, repulsion, and passion for the story it has directed you to. Allow your spontaneous thoughts and images to interact with your reflective consciousness. Prepare to take deeper ownership for the fuller picture of the many selves of your self. 

The Queen’s funeral might find one unexpectedly overcome by a depth of emotion completely enigmatic to one’s conscious attitude toward the monarch and sense of self. Closing one’s eyes to the world, an image of personal mother may appear. A series of vignettes might ensue, expressing her life of self-sacrifice and service, as she provided  nurturance and security to all. A wave of old grief might invite one to emotional release.

Perhaps one might be drawn instead to images of mother repressing emotion in all, stressing rules and limitations in her reign over one’s childhood. Perhaps one is then drawn into the emotion of guilt that one actually felt joy at liberation upon her passing.

At another level, one might encounter the numinous energy of royalty, the Great Mother Queen, whose coffin concealing her lifeless body draws thousands to wait countless hours to walk by and to personally commune with her Goddess energy. Welcome to the the domain of the archetypes.

Archetypes are nature’s images that direct human behavior from behind the mind’s eye. In archetypal reality, royalty is the Queen Bee, whom the drones of humanity are organized to serve. Queen and King are the ultimate mother and father in all benevolent or cruel authority figures that we encounter throughout life. We react to their projection with anxiety, awe, fear, and anger.

Inwardly, these archetypes are the ego’s parents, to which it owes its life. When ego inflates, it identifies with their power. When it deflates, it abandons all its power, as it returns to the womb in total surrender.

In Queen Elizabeth, ego highlighted the value of service—service to the established rules. Queen Elizabeth represented ego sacrifice to a higher value. Human predilection must conform to royal expectation, without exception.

Inwardly, human guilt and longing may be the consequence of our relationship to these powerful archetypes. Has my life gone wrong because I refused to sacrifice to service, that is, to what was expected of me? Is my fulfillment denied because my needs have offended the royals within? Is it time to break free of royal bondage? Am I prepared to go it alone, to honor my right to choose? And if I do, am I prepared to bear the wrath of the royal parents?

At the deepest collective level the boots of the activated Gods are making the Earth shudder. The Queen is dead, long live the King. Inwardly, this transition of power marks the emergence of a new rule, perhaps dictated by transition to a new stage of the life cycle. Clearly, the world is floundering as it seeks a new value to live by.

The Queen’s adherence to ancient precedent cannot lead us to salvation. What is needed is not adherence and sacrifice to tradition but service and acquiescence to what is truly needed for the Earth, and all her inhabitants. Can ego serve such a King?

These are the many worlds within that play for attention in our changing world without. Though we might laugh at the silliness of monarchy, perhaps if we close our eyes and discover the powers that be within, we’ll understand the reason for a tear as we listen to the bagpipes sending this Queen on her definitive journey.

With closed eyes opened,
Chuck

Chuck’s Place: All That Is & All That was

Joining above and below…
– Illustration © 2022 Jan Ketchel

Jeanne, from her Soul perspective, has advised that all we need in order to advance our karmic intention in this life is present in the material circumstances we encounter in this life. Regardless of the past life incarnations that constitute the deeper fabric of our present life, it is not necessary to retrieve them in memory to reconcile our Soul’s mission in this life.

Too much obsession with past life retrieval can distract one from fully living one’s current, actual, life. In fact, though fascinating and enchanting, past life exploration can, if overly lived in, provide a dissociative distraction from the depths of emotional engagement and challenge needed in the full living of one’s current life.

Recapitulation, or retrieval of all of one’s current life experiences, is the key to cracking the karmic nut of one’s current life. This is aptly verified by the life review process consistently reported in near death experiences (NDE). Retrieving and processing traumatic memory from this life also paves the way to liberation and fulfillment of one’s karmically interrupted current life.

Ultimately, one’s spiritual evolution requires a recapitulation of all of one’s many lives to arrive at the fullness of one’s Soul identity, an amalgam of all those experiences. Beyond that is the greater amalgam of all Souls’ journeys in the cosmic hologram of oneness. Wholeness requires full ownership and reconciliation with all that is and all that was.

As the icebergs melt and the lakes dry up, our material world reveals its hidden human history. The subtle energies of bygone times are no longer frozen in time, they reveal themselves upon the current world stage.

Queen Elizabeth’s passing is the end of an era that is, ironically,  reasserting itself upon the current world stage. The Souls of the unsettled departed cry out for attention and resolution, as the Queen recapitulates, in her subtle body, the life of her reign beyond the confines of her royal diplomacy.

The hunger of the Soviet empire to reassert its hegemony over Ukraine harkens back to 1922 when the Soviet Union annexed Ukraine. The rise of racist ideologies in political personalities throughout the world reflect Hitler and Mussolini, prominent dictators of WWII. The polarization among the American populace reflects the unleashing of suppressed energies and ideologies from its own Civil War of the 1860s.

In its current life, the world is facing a potential Armageddon, due to climate change brought on by a reticence to face the truth and acquiesce to the needs of the greater whole. The world ego is being challenged to grow beyond its narcissistic worldview to embrace a true love for neighbor. Souls currently in this life, as well as those subtly departed but still attached, are energetically engaged in the global chess moves of now.

Earth’s karma is forcing an engagement of unrequited energies that are demanding reconciliation. Currently, world ego is struggling to acknowledge Earth’s deepest needs, even as it prioritizes its own comfort and survival. The broader view that acknowledges and actively addresses the imperialist impulses of now, evident in much of the world’s response to the invasion of Ukraine, is a definite advance from ignoring the Nazi purge early in the lead up to WWII.

Hitler’s once crafty rise to power is being deeply reflected in the current challenges posed by the political events on many continents. The American Civil War is being replayed with a vengeance, while its unity, necessary to serve as world leader, teeters on collapse. The current release of anger, in the many tragedies of now, reflects another stage in the grieving process, perhaps unavoidable if we are to achieve the ultimate reconciliation of detached acceptance.

Though we shouldn’t obsess over the past world memories now active upon the world stage, appreciating the deeper restless energies of yesteryear casts a broader view of all that has a stake in the outcome of now. Our focus now should be on facing the truths of now, within and without.

From this position of broad contemplation, past and present included, let us take up, with diligence, the recapitulation of our personal lives, and find true fulfillment in loving all that is and all that was.

Intending the broader view,
Chuck