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Chuck’s Place: Yesterday’s Last Stand

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Heading into the future of a bright new day…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

My Spirit informs me every morning that yesterday is a past life. Deeply appreciative of that life lived, now is the time to pay it forward by meeting new life without attachment. Attachment is actually an emotional investment in an outcome.

There is a governor’s race of significance happening in Virginia on the day this blog is published. I believe I know what winner would represent the better outcome for being in the Tao. I voted, yet intend to have no attachment to the outcome.

The challenge is to achieve equanimity. The shamans of ancient Mexico taught that to truly be open to what infinity presents we must be free of expectation and prejudice. They discovered that the best training ground for that level of receptive attitude was in one’s encounters with the petty tyrants of this world.

A petty tyrant disregards all the rules. A petty tyrant has no consideration for the needs of others. A petty tyrant uses and abuses to satisfy their own selfish needs.

When we encounter petty tyrants we may be deeply hurt and offended by their actions. Ironically, this helps us, as we are shown where our egos have become personally attached and identified with the actions of others. Our emotions flare, as we are thrown off balance, and are drained of our energetic reserves. Our egos become deeply offended, requiring palliative care.

Sidelined by deflation, negativity pours in and we become slaves to our wounded feelings. The shamans recommend that we refine our egos by releasing all attachment to expectations of fairness and the consequent reactive emotions.

Ego, freed of these attachments, becomes a highly tuned unit of navigation, capable of adjusting to anything it encounters. It needn’t spend any of its vital energy defending its self-importance. The refined ego identifies fully with the values and intents of its Spirit, and adapts itself to what is possible, in any given situation.

Thus, if ‘the other guy’ wins the election, the ego will waste no time feeling sad, frightened or angry. If ‘the right guy’ wins the election, the ego will not indulge in feeling happy or hopeful. Equanimity imposes no judgment upon what is. Equanimity says: suspend judgment, await guidance from Spirit as to the next right action.

At the soul level of being—that is, life beyond the physical dimension—it is evident that powerful influences are engaged in the current struggle upon this Earth. As evenly divided as the legislatures of this world are, so are the positive and negative energies impacting this world. We are all engaged in a multi-dimensional dance between the forces of good and evil, no matter how attached or detached we are.

The I Ching frames this as the time of Coming to Meet (Hexagram #44). We are warned of the danger of such powerful clashes. Nonetheless, if we use such encounters as opportunities for shedding the heaviness of self-importance, we advance in spiritual lightness.

Spiritual lightness is our evolutionary destiny now, as we release yesterday’s attachment to material obsession and ego importance. This lightness of being allows us to be supremely in the Tao, now, irrespective of the world’s dance. We simply go with the flow, with abandon.

The most oppressive petty tyrants we face reveal themselves in our own inner prejudices. Ironically, they are also our greatest blindspots. We tend too quickly to project them upon the many tyrants of the outside world.

Nonetheless, if we track and examine our passionate emotions we are sure to be led to inner attachments, those attitudes that resist the new life of each new day.

As we are all holograms of our subtler interconnectedness, know that all personal progress in detachment advances our greater whole along its evolutionary path.  Appreciate, as well, those who so tightly cling to yesterday. Yesterday’s last stand is but the prelude to today’s unfolding.

Going with the flow,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Co-Creation Via Voluntary Control

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Co-create your beautiful wholeness…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Victor Frankl gave us the freedom to choose the attitude we take toward any reality we are confronted with. Jack Schwarz took us to a subtler dimension, giving us the ability to alter our physical reality through the voluntary control of the mind.

Both Frankl and Schwarz were interned in the death camps of the Holocaust. Both were able to survive and refine their psychic abilities through their encounters with, and mastery of, the pain and suffering they endured. Their gifts are fundamental to healing from trauma and assuming voluntary control of the co-creation of one’s life.

Co-creation implies collaborating with creation. “I am” is a fact I can become conscious of. I might even have access to remembering my prior journeys through infinity. But how “I” was initially created appears to have originated from a source beyond myself.

With consciousness, however, I truly can become a co-creator in that life of “I”. Co-creation is conscious partnership with one’s created self in the evolution and fulfillment of one’s life. Co-creation is assuming full responsibility for one’s life.

The created self is instilled with inborn instructions that control the human psyche, through instinctual patterns called archetypes, as well as through physical laws governed by genetic code. We can live a full life of instinctual fulfillment and a biologically determined physical course without conscious participation, but this would be a life devoid of co-creation.

Under traumatic conditions the archetypes and laws of ordinary life are severely interrupted, leading to experiences of non-ordinary reality. These glitches in the expectations of normalcy awaken consciousness to latent, but previously unrealized, abilities. This is the birth of the potential for co-creation.

Thus, the ability to visualize a loved one or a pleasant scene, simultaneous with being in a condition of torture, can enable one to displace one’s consciousness into an energetic state separate from the physical body. This distancing of oneself into a separate reality allows one to survive one’s physical ordeal in an out-of-body state. The co-creation of this act is the voluntary control of where one places one’s attention.

Of course, the full reentry of consciousness back into the physical body may be delayed for decades, until the mental plane is ready to endure the truth of the emotional and physical pain awaiting it in its body. Nonetheless, the discovery of life beyond the body awakens one’s ability to voluntarily control the placement of awareness in more subtle dimensions beyond physical reality.

Jack Schwarz gained access to what Jung called the “psychoid” dimension, what I call the subconscious mind, where spirit meets matter and directly impacts it. Creation dictates the activation of subconscious default programs to manage the impact of one’s experiences. These might be fight/flight/freeze programs with hormonal releases, as well as physical and mental responses.

Co-creation is consciousness assuming responsibility for creating new programs, or the willful exercise of existing programs. Thus, consciousness might employ the breath and autogenic messages to calm the mind and body as it processes its experiences.

Under strict laboratory conditions, supervised by Elmer Green at the Menninger Foundation, Jack Schwarz was able to push a large sewing needle through his own arm, remove it, stop the bleeding and completely heal, with absolutely no pain. (See video link below.)

This extreme, if not bizarre experiment, demonstrated the potential power of the mind to direct the course of matter, the matter of one’s own physical body, in rationally unthinkable ways!

In today’s parlance, we speak of the the ability to manifest and the power of intent. We all have the latent ability to become co-creators of our lives. However, to access this heightened state of realization, in a balanced integrated way, we must first fully inhabit the body we are in.

To be fully in-body we must process all the trauma the body has held for us while we lived somewhat outside the body. This is the process of recapitulation that enables union of body and mind. This is the night sea journey where consciousness awakens to, suffers through, and gets comfortable with the fullness of all its prior experiences, inside and outside of the body.

Freed of our triggering shadows we are able to explore—without the limitations of blocking beliefs, self-depreciation, or the narrow limits of rationality—the extraordinary abilities of the mind to manifest the physical reality it intends. This is accomplished through intention, mantra, self-hypnosis, prayer, visualization, etc.

Our global reality is priming us for this next stage of evolutionary advancement. Our time is rampant with trauma. We all suffer from it, but we are also all free to assume a positive attitude toward the events we all encounter in our everyday lives, on a regular basis, by grounding ourselves in calmness.

In facing the full truth of necessary changes, we are freed to intend, visualize, and manifest those changes, as we co-create, via voluntary control, the seeds of new life.

Begin with the self. Choose to sow within, and then sow without.

Co-creating with Self,

Chuck

Jack Schwarz: Mind over Matter

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Chuck’s Place: The Weight of Being Offended

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To the summit!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

If we characterize spiritual advance as reaching the summit of a mountain, being offended is the weight of a leaden backpack we carry as we attempt to climb upwards. The more we feel offended the harder it is to climb. Frequently, the quest becomes like the fate of Sisyphus: repeatedly nearly reaching the top only to tumble back to the start.

The weight of offense is measured by the resentments and entitlements we harbor for the wrongs done to us. These heavy emotions and expectations poison the mood and spirit of everyday life. Though we may have little control over the things that befall us, we have total control over the attitude we assume toward the fact that they happened.

The shamans of ancient Mexico came to the realization that we live in a predatory universe. Objectively speaking, all life feeds upon other life. Even an advanced Yogi who lives through breathing in air alone takes from it and consumes its prana, the subtle ether that sustains the physical body.

Shamans accept the predatory nature of the universe as an energetic fact. They focus on how to navigate life to both survive and advance under these predatory conditions. They see the major hindrance to successful navigation as the human tendency to get caught in affronts to one’s self-importance.

When Jeanne Marie Ketchel was diagnosed with breast cancer, she struggled for years afterwards with resentment. “Why me, I don’t deserve this, I take extraordinary care of myself!” Eventually she came to, “why not me, I’m no more special than anyone else.” This loss of preoccupation with being offended was to free her energy and lead to her spiritual healing and advancement. When she left this world there was no need to fully reincarnate to work through issues of offended self-importance.

Shamans recommend that we use those occasions of feeling offended as opportunities to hone our souls. Though we may be hurt and injured by an attack, we can lighten our pain and sharpen our focus by not being personally offended by an event. The wisdom of martial arts is to never waste any energy at being offended by an attack but instead to have one’s full attention available to prepare the best response.

Shamans suggest we view our interactions with the antagonists in our lives as opportunities for spiritual advancement. This is not about treating our challenges as gifts but simply as necessary opportunities for growth. The task then becomes what we choose to do with our challenges. Our first task is to ruthlessly stare down any self-importance that would compromise our energy and effectiveness.

If we complain, we lose energy. If we get caught in self pity, we lose energy. If we shed offense, pity and judgment, we are free to mold ourselves into any being that would be a step toward ultimate success.

Thus, if I am unfairly treated at work I can allow myself to do grunt work calmly, without wasting energy on being offended, if I see that this will lead to my ultimate advancement. I can feel good that I am honing my energy for spiritual and career advancement by remaining calm while actually being treated unfairly.

Even if I never receive the promotion I deserve, I am significantly lightening the weight of being offended, and lightening my backpack, as I rapidly surmount the summit! That’s the best use of the predatory universe we live in.

Without attachment to outcome, release the weight of offense and you can’t help but spiritually advance.

Shedding,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog, Jan's Blog

Beyond Facebook: The Spirit of Maturity

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With spirit’s intent there are no limits…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

This past week we withdrew from Facebook. We are no longer posting on it. We were always of two minds about using it. We didn’t use it in the way that most people use it, never having engaged in searching for old friends or using it to connect with people we knew.

We used it solely as a platform for our work, sort of as an extension of our website, but even so, we didn’t really like what was behind it. Last week’s testimony by whistleblower Frances Haugen clarified for us the deeper truth about it and underscored our persistent uneasiness.

We offer tools for healing from abuse and trauma. Our intent in sharing our work and our lessons in life has always been to offer what we’ve learned without strings attached, freely given. That is not, nor has it ever been, the intent of Facebook.

After listening to Haugen’s testimony, it became clear to us that the Facebook corporation has been complicit in systematically grooming young children, and even adults, to adopt addictive behaviors that lead to harmful and even damaging mental, physical and spiritual trauma. Though not necessarily malevolent in its intent, Facebook has nonetheless been neglectful in its effort to correct these commercially driven destructive practices.

How could we utilize Facebook and piggyback off it, when we are all about healing? How could we use a platform that has done harm to the innocent? How could we allow our healing work to sit on a platform that doesn’t care about people, only about making more and more money, no matter who falls by the wayside while they do it?

The time had finally come. What we had talked about for months, became the action of the day: remove our energy from Facebook and no longer use it to promote our healing work.

Although our pages, as previously published, still remain accessible, we do not look at them and, at some point, when we feel that everyone who has been used to reading us via Facebook has become familiarized with accessing us directly through our website, we will fully remove them.

Facebook has become the major social network to empower all citizens of the world to connect directly with each other. That in itself is not a bad thing. The byproduct of such access, however, has also entrapped much of the world’s energy in the insatiable need to be liked, what the shamans call the trap of self-importance. Self-importance and insatiable greed have undermined our moral compass.

Recent revelations have clearly exposed the preeminence of algorithms for profit over the common good, as the operating principle for the publicly traded Facebook corporation. From the economic perspective that values maximum profit as a most legitimate goal, Facebook is no different than most corporations. The old axiom, “the business of America is business”, has become anachronistic, driving us, in the extreme, to the brink of destruction.

Our planetary and species survival is contingent upon a way of life that accepts modesty, limitation and equanimity as its guiding principles. The quest for unlimited profit has compromised our moral underpinnings and the common good. We are evolving into a species that must operate from the place of truth and true need to insure our survival on our rapidly changing planet. This, as the new algorithm, places the true needs of the planet and its inhabitants above the profit motive.

What is the alternative? Specific to our decision to leave Facebook we call to the intent that those who would truly benefit from what we have to offer will find their way to our offerings. In fact, this has been the overarching intent that has always controlled the unfolding events of our lives.

The overarching intent of the individual spirits of all human beings is that we mature in this life. This spirit intent is materialized at the center of the subconscious mind, that which naturally attracts to it the physical circumstances necessary to advance its maturity.

The marketing psychologists of the early 20th century discovered and exploited this attractive function in the subconscious, which they infiltrated with advertising suggestions to make a profit. This drove a wedge in the human species, between listening to the guidance of the inner spirit vs the outer promptings of the marketplace, with all its hypnotic suggestions.

Spirit intent never abandoned human life, but the challenge for ego to  trust its guidance has greatly compromised its ability to choose wisely and trust its own heart and mind. Outside approval and likes have become the measure of personal value and has commandeered the direction of intent.

Take back your intent. Refuse the ruse and dependence upon a way of life that places the influence of heartless marketing above the truth of the heart. Trust that placing your intent upon your heart’s truth is all that is necessary to attract to you exactly what you truly need to advance your spirit’s maturity in this life. Advancing in maturity is the real solution to this world’s survival.

May the business of America become the Spirit of Maturity,

Jan and Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Of Your Choosing But Not Of Your Choosing

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The law of nature is growth…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

After Jeanne Marie Ketchel left her life, in a human body, she was amazed to discover that she was still very much a part of this world, though in a much more subtle body than the physical body she had recently shed. Following a period of rejuvenation and orientation she chose a task that was to become her new life mission.

More precisely, she describes this afterlife choice process as, “It will be of your choosing, but not of your choosing. It will be granted because it is exactly where you need to go, but it will also be where you fit perfectly.” (The Book of Us, p. 165)

No outside judge decides where we need to go, we are the ultimate judge of our lives.

“Where you need to go” is how I define karma. The underlying law of nature, both physical and spiritual, is growth. Spiritual growth progresses through lighter and lighter stages of being. We shed the denseness of physical matter upon physical death and enter our lighter energy body soul-state.

However, an individual who remains attached to their worldly possessions and physical proclivities upon death will, of necessity, enter a bardo environment that fits this state of evolution. The Buddhists define bardos as alternative worlds that reflect a soul’s state of spiritual accomplishments, high or low, offering what is necessary for continued growth, for every soul is destined to grow and evolve at their own pace.

Thus, continued life would be in a bardo of one’s choosing and yet not; it would be the only fitting place in which to evolve, hence, would be a natural next step. Souls remain in bardo states until they are ready to move on, meaning until they have grown or progressed enough to shed their attachment to the coveted activities of physical life or have completed the necessary expiation resulting from them.

The significant point here is that we are in full control of where we land based upon the choices we make and how far we spiritually evolve, in whatever world we are in. Upon changing worlds, at death, we can only go where we have prepared ourselves to go.

Karma is not punitive, it is objective. Though we might covet a highly evolved spiritual existence, we will only manifest it when we have completed the prerequisites for such an existence. Death does not automatically result in spiritual advancement, unless we have consciously worked toward it during our lifetime. Alternatively, though we may in fact be spiritually advanced during our lifetime, we may be placed in a remedial bardo to complete the necessary requirements for even greater ascension.

The same principle governs the life we are currently in: we can only advance in our careers and relationships to the extent that we have learned and prepared ourselves to advance into deeper fulfillment.

We are the ultimate judge of our lives, as we place ourselves where we need to go based on the choices we have made and the consequences of those choices. Judgment is based on full transparency—the truth. We are free to ignore the truth, but in that case we land ourselves in the bardo best fitted to allow us to accept the truth that we avoid, and to grow beyond it.

Our truest judge is the voice of our conscience, which is located in the heart center. This is the heart not of sentimentality nor romance but the heart of our morality, our deepest knowing of what is right. This voice of the heart is to be distinguished from the voice of the aberrant inner critic, the product of the conjuring mind’s incessant storytelling.

If we quiet our mind and ask our heart to speak the truth, it will calmly reveal it—no drama, just the plain truth.  The true judge—the voice of heart centered conscience—will always know and choose rightly where we must go next.

If we align our decisions and actions with the truth that we are shown, we will advance as spiritually enlightened beings.

From the heart,

Chuck