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Chuck’s Place: Tell Your Body What To Do

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Image by Jan Ketchel

I would like to say that, yes, it is that simple. By telling your heart to beat slower, it will beat slower. By telling your blood pressure to flow more calmly, it will flow more calmly. By telling your breathing to calm down, it will calm down. By telling your body to relax, it will relax.

And though I know from personal experience that these things are true, I  also know that our internal programming, largely molded by our social conditioning and education, tells us that such things are not possible.

The rational mind either rejects such a simplistic possibility and refuses to do it or makes half-hearted attempts a couple of times and proves its absurdity.

If we allow our accepted beliefs to control our actions without honestly testing out possibilities beyond those beliefs, we will be slow to evolve. Evolution requires that we allow life to progress through its changes. If we grasp too tightly to old beliefs without testing new possibilities we create roadblocks to our own growth and evolution.

The true scientist is not offended when the outcome of an experiment disproves the stated hypothesis. To the contrary, there is the thrill of the discovery of a new truth. Science, at its purest, is a lover of truth. Beliefs that refuse to yield to an unprejudiced experiment are no lovers of true science.

It is true that many of our cognitive, emotional and behavioral actions happen outside the control of consciousness. Our subconscious minds are the home of the programs that automatically operate our physical and mental systems.

We should be quite thankful that the subconscious automatically shoulders the directing of these systems. Imagine if we had to tell ourselves to breathe every breath we inhale throughout the day! We’d have little energy and focus to do any other activity. Yet, it is a fact that at times, when we do assume conscious control of our breathing, it can have a deeply calming effect upon our body and state of mind.

The science behind the efficacy of conscious self-regulation can be traced to the pioneering research of German psychiatrist Johannes Heinrich Schultz in what he called autogenic training. The marvels of hypnosis were in deep display in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. No one could deny that the subconscious mind could be influenced to vastly change the condition of the body.

What Schultz advanced was the possibility of a direct relationship between the conscious mind and the state of the body. Rather than put the conscious mind to sleep in a state of trance and then have the subconscious controlled by the suggestions of the hypnotist, in autogenic training the conscious mind is fully awake, talking with conviction to the body and the underlying subconscious, consciously directing physical changes.

The mind, at the level of the ego, the chief navigator of daily life, can decide at any time to direct thinking and behavior. This means volitionally, with conscious intent, interrupting and overriding the currently active program operating from the center of the subconscious mind.

With calm, unbiased perseverance, one can discover, for themselves, the power they have to directly influence the state of their central nervous system. Of course there are many other ways to influence this relationship, such as through the use of medications, whose chemicals exert direct influence over the automatic programs running the body.

Energy therapies such as acupuncture also directly impact the energy channels in the body, by overriding subconscious programs causing energy blockages. Massage therapy deals with the relaxing and redistributing of energy at the level of the densest concentrations of energy, the physical body.

All these methods have their benefits and may be helpful to creating harmony within the CNS. Statements made directly to the body empower an individual to directly impact their state of being. Of course, one should always investigate the reason behind an uncomfortable body condition, as there may be a message behind it to the psyche from the body, asking it to change a dysfunctional behavior or to investigate some deeper issue.

Nonetheless, even that kind of investigation requires a calm state of being to allow for clear mental processing. For this, the simple directive from the conscious mind, telling the heart to beat slower, may prove extremely useful.

Try it. See what happens. Be a true scientist.

My heart beats slower,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog, Jan's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Now is the Time of Testing

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Being love…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

What is the spiritual purpose of the coronavirus? We ask this question as a new variant, given the name of the Greek letter, Omicron, descends upon us.

Spirit is the purest, most rarified subtle energy intent behind physical reality. Spirit intent is encoded in DNA and in the subconscious programs that attract and solidify energy into the physical forms that we are and know ourselves to be.

Nothing exists that is not, at its most subtle core, spirit. Spirit is housed in the subtle body called the soul, just as the soul inhabits the physical body during its earthly sojourn. As one spiritually progresses, one’s consciousness lives in evermore subtle bodies of spirit.

Spiritual evolution is accomplished through the successful passing of tests at various soul body stages. While in human form the soul body is symbiotically attached to the physical body, thus much of the spiritual tests in human form occur in relation to the physical plane. Someone may have to deal with a debilitating illness; someone else may have to overcome extreme shyness; someone else may have to confront rejection, abandonment, or deep loss.

The greatest test in human form, however, is to bridge spirit truth with physical life. Spirit truth, first and foremost, knows that everything that exists is part of an indivisible whole. At a physical level, we appear as distinct separate objects; at a spiritual level we are all one.

The spiritual challenge of our time is to raise our consciousness to a higher level of truth and embrace actions that bring our interdependent physical whole into harmony and balance. To accomplish this we must overcome our separatist illusions that deny our deeper spiritual truth of oneness.

While in human form we are all holograms of Gaia, Mother Earth. Our separatist behaviors, which have thrown Gaia into disarray, have been our own process of coming to know ourselves, enacted through a system of differentiation from each other, a necessary developmental step.

However, differentiation is but the prelude to union. That which has been distinguished must find its way back to its wholeness, filled with new knowledge of self, gained through self-exploration. Greater consciousness is then rejoined with its greater wholeness.

The appearance of Omicron is rocking our very fragile sense of freedom and mobility. Something greater is being asked of us than simply a return to normalcy. Yes, we so want our freedoms of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but we must raise these values to physical expression according to higher spiritual truth.

The freedom to travel and interact with the entire physical world is being transmuted to the spiritual level of truly caring for and loving everyone, and everything, in this world. Accepting physical limitation elevates spiritual connectedness.

Our collective spirit has landed in this physical world to bring the Earth into greater spiritual harmony. Symbiotically, our individual spirits are themselves being raised to higher soul body states, as we pass the tests presented in this physical world.

Progression is the ultimate law of spirit. Astrologically, both Pisces and Aquarius have Omicron stars in their constellations. For Pisces, it’s a big yellow star, for Aquarius a blue one. We have moved now from 2100 years of Pisces domination into the Age of Aquarius.

Pisces represents the goddess and god of love, Aphrodite and Eros, bound together as two fish in the sea, hiding out from the destructive shadow of Typhon, the personification of violent volcanic forces. Love has been safely protected in the time of Pisces but now is being challenged to rise out of the protective sea into the air of greater spiritual realization, into the water jug of Aquarius, the water bearer.

With such exposure, love cannot help but encounter its shadow in Typhon, cruel and power hungry. This is the collective test of our time, to overcome and absorb Typhon through the purest of rarified love.

Fear not this time of testing. Take full advantage of opening to loving all that you hate. Join with the water bearer in raising the spiritual level of self and world. It’s not about seeking love but all about being love. That’s the transformation that our times call for.

When you open your heart to loving, you become a loving being. And when you are love, you become fully available to love as well.

Let there be love,

Chuck and Jan

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: God Is A Lymph Node

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Heart centered harmony in the Tao…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Polarity is the essence of life. Electricity is the intimate dance between positive protons and negative electrons. Likewise, magnetism is the energy of attraction between opposites.

The interplay of these opposites are the ups and downs of life. When we jump up in the air we are drawn down to the earth. Though we are light spirit beings we reside in a dense physical body. This bipolarity of our beingness is the essence of life. Our ability to reconcile these opposites is what brings balance to life. Harmony is balance generated within the interplay of opposites.

Governments reflect the interplay of opposites. Generally there is polarization between left and right viewpoints. Governments seek harmony of governance through reconciliation of these opposites. Our world today reflects extreme polarities that resist reconciliation through the integration of opposites.

The extreme polarities of now are deeply enhanced by a third factor: the pervasive extraction of human data through the internet. This extracted data allows corporations and special interests to manipulate consumers and citizens to buy and believe. It can now be argued that the internet has created its own world governance that rivals and controls both reality and elected governments.

This current state of affairs has led to an extreme world bipolar disorder. Nonetheless, this, even in its extreme imbalance, is part of the Tao. Humans are challenged with the reconciliation of these extreme opposites that are insistent upon remaining one-sided, fueled by morally  indifferent special interests. Human beings must restore the balance of opposites to return the world to harmony. But how?

In Jan’s recent dream, a group of Mennonite women knocked on the door with the message, “God is a lymph node.” A group of men were down the driveway arranging stones to create a waterfall. The water was filtered as it flowed over the rocks. End of dream.

The action of the waterfall personifies the function of the lymphatic system. The lymphatic system is our body’s filtering system. If the dream is assigning this system the rank of God, then the ability to properly filter is being given the highest spiritual value.

The algorithms of the internet target the subconscious mind to influence human emotion, cognition and action. We are all being catered to, both positively and negatively, by algorithms tuned to our personal habits or virtual footprints. For instance, in a recent blog I discussed wrenches on my workbench. Within the hour of it being published an email selling wrenches appeared in my inbox! Make no mistake about it. Everything we research, write or purchase is extracted as a datapoint on how to influence us.

Jan’s dream brings the highest value to the ability to filter. The internet, for all its wonders, is filled with toxicity. When we are catered to we tend not to recognize this toxic implant. For instance, if it is known I have a specific point of view I might be sent news articles or supposed studies that validate my perspective to influence my thoughts and feelings, as well as stir my emotions and actions.

Filtering can best be achieved by seeking the truth of the heart. If I am excited and feel self-righteous about an issue, my heart will tell me the truth: I am being inflated and attaching to a one-sided truth. As I cling to one pole of my bipolar being I throw myself out of balance and lose the harmony that is maintained through reconciliation of opposites.

Humbly incorporating this truth prevents nefarious internalized programs from taking root in my subconscious mind. I am now freed to incorporate the value of views opposite to my own. This reconciliation of opposites restores inner harmony.

May we all embrace the filtering and immunity-boosting benefits of our body’s lymphatic system. On the mental plain, let us utilize the cleansing system of the heart to arrive at both inner and outer truth. The heart, without prejudice, will lead us to harmony in polarity.

Filtering,

Chuck

Interesting reading: You Are the Object of a Secret Extraction Operation

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Mastery of Terror

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How to transmute terror…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Terror registers in the body as uncontrollable heart-thumping anxiety. Mastery of terror is the resumption of voluntary control over the short-circuited nervous system. This mastery involves a transmutation of powerful energies that creates highly resilient nervous system circuitry to handle the emotional impact of the greatest stressors in life.

Voluntary control requires the participation of one’s conscious ego in directing one’s response to terror. Though the order of actions to be taken are unique to one’s personal experience, each of the following are likely to be part of one’s process.

Redirect the racing mind: Oftentimes, the mind responds to anxiety by projecting and imagining scenarios that invite intensified fear to the body. This can generate repetitive cycles of overpowering future projections and ever-heightening anxiety.

The mind, in an attempt to bring order into chaos, gets helplessly trapped on the mental plane, seeking a mental narrative that will extinguish the fire in the body. In so doing, the mind dissociates from the body’s experience, and actually contributes to its distress through its mental imaginings.

Shut down mental processing by redirecting attention to the body.

Direct the breath. Breathe into the abdominal cavity. Allow the stomach to expand, like filling up a balloon. Keep the focus on the breath; refuse to engage thought. Be accepting of any amount of breath that enters the lower part of the body.

Keep breathing into the abdomen, noticing its ability to take in more air. When possible, begin to introduce counting. Occupy the mind with this task: Breathe in to the count of 4. Hold the breath for a count of 8. Exhale to the count of 8. Repeat this cycle, incessantly. Gradually this breathing exercise will shift one’s brainwaves into a more relaxed alpha state.

The Recapitulation Breath. Turn your head as much as you comfortably can to the left. Fully exhale, then immediately begin a full inhalation as you turn your head, in pace with your breath, all the way to the right side. Pause slightly as you reverse direction and begin a complete exhalation, fanning your head back to the left side. Pause, ever so slightly, and begin again a full inhalation as you turn your head back to the right, then exhaling back again to the left. Repeat this pattern as long as you wish, adjusting the pace to what feels right.

Send direct commands to the subconscious. The subconscious is command central for the CNS and all the organs of the body. It operates with default programs on automatic pilot unless redirected by the conscious mind to do otherwise. Speak directly to the heart: “Heart, slow down your beating.” State this command with the cadence you intend it to beat at. Restate this suggestion rotely, adjusting the pace and intensity of the words to the needs of your experience.

Broaden attention and suggestions to the entire body. If possible lie down, allowing the body to be fully supported and able to release. Bring attention to the feet. State: “my feet are calming, my feet are relaxed.” Restate this suggestion. Notice the release of tension, the tingling of warmth in your feet.

Proceed to the legs. Bring present awareness to the sensations in the calf muscles. State the direction: “My calf muscles are calming, my calf muscles are relaxed.” Repeat this suggestion. Notice the body’s response. Move on to the thigh muscles, torso, stomach, heart, shoulders, arms, fingers, back, neck, head, face, eyes, and jaw. When finished, start over again.

At bedtime, direct the mind to place its concerns on the shelf of tomorrow. Now is the time for restorative sleep. Refuse thoughts that tempt reentry into processing. Trust the powers of deep restorative sleep to care for the overall needs of the self. Let go to the higher power of sleep.

If sleep is not possible, or if it is the time to be awake, direct the self to be fully present and engaged in the task it is undertaking. Refuse the mind’s slip into trancelike imaginative thoughts that reactivate fears. Decide when the time will be in the day to take the issue of concern off the shelf for consideration. Remind the self throughout the day to stay present to now, and that one’s appointment with thoughtful consideration of the issue will take place later, at the designated appropriate time.

Show up for your appointment. You have successfully strengthened your CNS circuitry through the above practices. Nonetheless, the completion of mastery requires that you reenter the experience that first generated terror. Valarie Kaur, in her book See No Stranger, presents many examples of successful entry into challenging encounters despite a somewhat accelerated heartbeat.

Oftentimes, terror occurs on the cusp of recapitulating an activated trauma from earlier in life. Mastery of that trauma ultimately requires that we reenter the fullness of that unprocessed experience and tame it. Armed with the above mentioned tools, as well as other needed supports, one’s present-self gradually calms the CNS and neutralizes the emotional intensity of the trauma.

This is mastery. The trauma becomes merely a fact of one’s life that no longer holds one captive to its terror. The energy of terror is now transmuted into the maturity of mastery.

Mastering,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Spirit In the Flesh

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Organizing…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Organizing my tools for easy access, I discover eccentric looking wrenches I may have used only once. Truth is, I don’t even remember what for. What to do with these valuable but perhaps once in a lifetime project savers, as well as the countless mini hex wrenches and screwdrivers that accompanied furniture projects to be assembled?

I soberly face the hidden truth of my tool hoarding, and perhaps all hoarding as well: eternal life parks its spirit in the material items of this life. The belief is that someday all items will be used. The someday of hoarding encapsulates infinity, life without end; never throw anything out.

Spirit is eternal life. Spirit is the intent that manifested our physical world to take material journeys with its infinite spirit. The Faustian small print of that agreement is the actual short life of all things material. We crave to live spirit in the flesh, yet spirit as trickster dares us to face our material mortality.

This bipolar human condition is the opposition of infinite spirit and mortal body. When we inflate we momentarily commune with infinity. This is the motive behind all addictions. The spirit to obtain unlimited more—be it the compulsion to pile boundless money, to ingest bottomless drug or food, to collect vast wardrobe and material goods, or to cling to relationship—is the quest to experience infinite spirit in material form.

Deflation and depression are the crash of Icarus: the material world is a world of limitation. Once spirit approaches material limits, it abandons its projected love object. The result is that we deflate into a spiritless morass. That which once glowed with transpersonal union is judged as both human ignorance and failure.

Sobriety is the path that intends acceptance of human limitation while maintaining a relationship with spirit. The shamans of ancient Mexico concluded each introduction of their personal names with the caveat: “…a being who is going to die.” This was their technology of sobriety. By constantly reaffirming their mortality they freed themselves to be fully present and spiritedly alive to every moment of life in human form.

This attitude of ultimate equanimity countered the misguided but powerfully embedded human attitude that we have forever. Hence, we needn’t acknowledge the shadow of death that stalks us all.

Yes, we may have forever in spirit form, but this appears to be our only opportunity to be in the specific human life we are in. If we languish in spirit identification without actualizing in human form, potential fulfillment will have to wait for another time, in another place, in a different life.

Without spirit we could not exist in the flesh. Yet spirit demands we take responsibility for reconciling the fact of our bipolar human condition. Spirit presents us with countless material false god trials onto which it projects itself. The inflations and deflations of human life lead us to stare down the trickster side of spirit and realize the possible in the life we are in.

With this, spirit is enhanced and fulfilled, both in this life and in its ultimate journey beyond.

May all find the fortitude to truly realize their Spirit in the Flesh.

Sorting my tools,

Chuck