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Chuck’s Place: From Rescue to Empowerment

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Don Juan comments to Carlos Castaneda in The Art of Dreaming: “Your unbiased reaction is that you can’t stand chains, and you would forfeit your life to break them.”

Watch out for those spirit entities, you never know where they’ll lead you!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Carlos had been tricked in his dreaming, as he explored a world of spirit entities. Those entities have much to teach a journeyer, but they exact a huge price for sharing their knowledge. In this case, they sought to entice Carlos to stay in their world, as his high frequency energy provided much entertainment to the more stationary beings of that realm. He survived their obvious attempts to cater to his curiosity but hadn’t bargained for their trickery, which targeted his unbiased reaction that Don Juan spoke of.

What Carlos hadn’t anticipated was an encounter these spirit entities set up for him in their world, contact with a trapped being presenting as a seven-year-old girl, with powerful blue eyes, seeking his help. Spontaneously, he shouted his intent to merge his energy with that prisoner child and set her free. With this impulsive move he became the prisoner, nothing more than a limp figure lying at the bottom of an empty pit, his vital energy completely exhausted.

Carlos was rescued by his warrior cohorts, but his journey marked a turning point for the future of his shamanic line. Carlos and his warrior party ultimately decided to end the shaman’s code of silence and anonymity, launching Tensegrity, freely giving away the technology and knowledge of the Ancient Shamans of Mexico, and formally ending their shamanic line. These actions formatted ancient knowledge to gain footing and have utility in our changing times.

Shamans have always been the spirit journeyers who healed others through soul retrievals, finding lost parts and returning them to the victim, effecting the cure of restored wholeness. Thus, those afflicted with illness depended upon the shaman to provide their cure. In our time it has become clear that healing effected by the hands of another does not hold up if the individual has not inwardly solved the challenge presented by the illness.

The evolutionary shift Carlos and his cohorts made was to offer the tools of empowerment and healing to all to heal themselves. In my psychotherapy practice the tool of recapitulation that I learned in the shaman’s world has proven most effective in the total cure of PTSD. That tool offers every individual the opportunity to completely restore their own lost wholeness as they encounter and integrate split off parts of themselves that were previously lost to traumatic experience.

Through this method, rescue is transformed into self-empowerment. The role of helper becomes one of teaching and supporting this healing practice. The role of healer is transferred to the seeker who is empowered to truly know and reconcile the whole truth of their lives. This is healing through self-empowerment versus the tentativeness and dependence upon the actions of another.

Thus, Carlos transformed his proclivity to rescue into giving away his knowledge that all who truly seek to heal be empowered to heal themselves. In this time of great instability we are empowered to find stability in the consolidation of our wholeness through our personal practice of recapitulation. Thank you, Carlos, for this evolutionary gift.

With affection,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Shaman Meets Science

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Our new pathway on the mountain…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Jan and I have been called to the mountain, specifically Robert’s Mountain, home of the Monroe Institute in Faber, Virginia. Seemed as if it was a choice, but in retrospect, the prompts were so obvious we now see our “choice” as actually acquiescing to the inevitable. Specifically, we realize that we are our future selves fully recapitulating this stage of our lives now.

Carl Jung, in his major out-of-body journey in 1944, encountered a Yogi in deep meditation in a temple. He saw in that moment that his life was that Yogi’s dream. We are our future self’s dream.

Jan and I must experience the fullness of this momentous transition and make decisions and take actions that took place long ago because we are living them now. That is the essence of recapitulation: fully reliving and fully living an experience.

The Shamans of Ancient Mexico called this practice moving the assemblage point, like a stylus that hovers over the wheel of time and lands on a previously recorded life experience and plays that tune over again. Rather than just listening to an old recording we are transported to the recording studio where we live our actual first recording.

The people on Robert’s Mountain call it remote viewing, a process of tapping into the matrix of all experience and honing in on a specific target. Remote viewers tap into the hologram of all interconnected reality, what brain science is beginning to realize is accessible to all through the right brain. For Jan and I, our target in that vast Akashic matrix is this time of great transition to the mountain. For those we are connected to this is a leap into greater energetic connection as well, as we are all challenged now to connect in new energetic ways.

As I look back on my time in the shaman’s world I recall the moment William Buhlman’s Adventure’s Beyond the Body crossed my path. It marked my first introduction to Robert Monroe, whose mountain we will settle upon. I now see how even then I was being awoken to a juxtaposition of worlds, shaman and science, that would be meaningful in the future. (As I wrote this reference to Buhlman’s book I took a break and shared with Jan this memory. She stood before me with a paper in hand, something she had just found. It was Jeanne’s receipt from ordering Buhlman’s book! Incidentally, we recently discovered that Buhlman just moved to the mountain too.)

Don Juan Matus’s final conclusion for humanity was that we must evolve our full energetic potential for our species to survive. Robert Monroe, in his out-of-body adventures, verified that life in the energy body is the future of mankind. We will survive as human energy beings fluidly capable of life in the physical as well as the energy body.

This exploration of physical and energetic body relationship and capabilities was undertaken by Lieutenant Skip Atwater in the U.S. Army’s Stargate program for remote viewing.  Here it was scientifically validated that it is possible for human consciousness to travel anywhere in the universe in present, past, and future time. Jan and I have purchased the home he built and lived in for many years on Robert’s Mountain. He was Research Director of The Monroe Institute for many years and later its president.

Though we are all presently experiencing a physical world fixated on its material gains and losses, our future development must focus on honing the power of intent at an energetic as well as physical level. In fact, it appears that Jan and I were called, at an energetic level, to the mountain to participate in this evolving necessity.

See you in the energy body, if not before…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Shaman has met science. When Carlos Castaneda insisted we suspend judgment he was the shaman insisting upon scientific method devoid of limiting beliefs. When science uses its technology to relax the left brain to approach the interconnected all-knowing of the right brain, it too is subduing the overarching order of logic and cause and effect that can prejudice our deeper knowing of objective reality.

Let us view the greater world trauma of now as the energy thrusting us all into our greater energetic potential. All trauma has the side effect of opening us to our greater energetic potential, but we must recapitulate first to truly hone those psychic abilities. That’s where shaman meets science, a brave new world indeed!

Living the dream,

Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Harmony

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Let’s get those chakras in alignment…
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

Harmony is created when the primal energies of heaven and earth move into union with each other. Heaven, whose natural movement is upward, places itself beneath the earth, whose natural movement is downward, creating a true meeting of their respective influences.

Heaven corresponds to the mental/spiritual plane in a human being, the upper chakras starting at the heart center. Earth corresponds to the physical plane, including the instincts, emotions, and inherent archetypes of the collective unconscious that dominate human behavior. These are the core lower chakras in the human body starting at the solar plexus downward.

When the mental plane respectfully places itself beneath the physical it attends to the sensations and emotions of the body as important messengers of necessary actions. Thus the mind attends to a body discomfort vs. cutting it off and acting on its own agenda.

Cutting off the body through imposition of the will is a form of dissociation. In this case heaven/mind is above, lifting into space far removed from the body/earth, which sinks in the opposite direction, their influences completely disconnected from each other.

Harmony requires connection and balanced integration of opposite tendencies. The I Ching reveals to me that this is the necessary action of now, for the time we live in. Further, it emphasizes that body/emotion defer to mind/reason at present . As well, it asks of mind/reason to defer to the more inclusive mind/Self. Consciousness in alignment with truth is called upon to further the individuation of the whole human being.

Understand that all human beings, regardless of gender, are a mixture of Yin and Yang, body and spirit. In effect the I Ching asks Yin/earth to receive the initiative of Yang/heaven. Truth received with affection is harmony. The operative word here is truth: that which emanates from the heart center of the body, home of the spirit Self. Initiative that emanates from the ego/mind lacks the rootedness and comprehensive truth of the Self.

We are faced now with a world of breakthrough conditions whether it be the hot lava in Hawaii or the protests in Gaza. In the midst of the chaos we are guided to seek peace and harmony through tuning into the guidance of the truth of the heart.

Truthful guidance is always accessible if we still ourselves, breathe into our heart center, and intend genuine harmony. Regardless of outer conditions we can always find peace and harmony within and act upon what is truthfully necessary to do and not do now. Thus, may we all be restored to harmony in the eye of our present storms.

Finding harmony,

Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Beyond Self-Importance

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I am more than my physical body…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel taken at The Monroe Institute in Faber, Virginia

For many years, we must grapple with our acquired inferiority and  journey to overcome it. All humans become inferior as they grow from a childhood of oneness of connection to everything to a firmly separated ego identity whose consciousness creates firm boundaries between self and other.

This loss of oneness happens gradually as we are socialized into rational thinking, the operational interpretation system of our world. Rationality, with its cause and effect focus, fragments our  wholeness in an effort to bring understanding, order, and control into our lives. Our inherent connection to our soul group and access to the  knowledge of our journeys through infinity, as recorded in the holographic Akashic record of all life, slips away as the challenges of navigating life on earth calls for greater adaptation to the physical world.

This loss of connection to our greater wholeness is the ultimate cause of the collective human condition of inferiority. The truth is that our poor ego is inferior. How could it be otherwise? To go from a condition of interconnected oneness, what many might characterize as the oneness of God, to the puny separateness of an ego disconnected from its source is a built-in experience of inferiority.

Ego has few options to improve its impoverished state of being. One option is to learn and master the rules of the interpretation system of this world that will allow it greater adaptation to the challenges of survival. This track—good schools, good mate, good job—though still powerful, is found wanting in our time of general disintegration. Our planet can no longer house unlimited growth.

Another option for our ego is to employ either deflation or inflation. In deflation the ego keeps itself down, as it sees all others in the world as superior to itself. The advantage to this strategy is to be more accepting of an inferior life by feeling unworthy of receiving more. The downside of this strategy is possible depression and resentment for not having been able to experience or actualize more of one’s inherent potential.

In contrast, inflation fills the ego with a high level of self-importance, as it puffs itself up with an identification with a higher spirit. Narcissism could be understood as the ultimate identification with God: I am all there is! The trap of self-importance is a false assessment of self that is off-putting and generally not up to the job.

So what is a more realistic option for the ego beyond the trappings of self-importance with its artificially low value with deflation or overvaluation with inflation? First, we must actually value the ego for what it truly is: a fragment of our soul that lives in a world of space-time. This unique opportunity has an advantage over infinity. That which is born, lives, and dies can experience a maturing and discovery process while separated from the oneness of infinity.

In fact, it is likely that our greater soul group chooses life in this world to discover and grow through questions and problems that will enhance our soul’s journey in infinity. A sojourn in space-time provides the opportunity for a full exposition and living out of a question in a lifetime that enhances our soul’s knowing of itself outside space-time.

Nonetheless, the cost to our ego in this earthly lifetime is a disconnect from the mothership of our greater soul in infinity. This is simply the necessary byproduct of a life in space-time. However, this ego/greater soul axis remains present throughout our lifetime as a latent potential to be more fully realized and developed. This is the evolutionary shift now happening in the world. This is the key to the ego shedding self-importance as a survival strategy to cover up its inadequacy.

Through its sensory systems the ego is quite capable of bringing to consciousness concrete data perceived in the world, as well as mentally orienting itself to that data. If the ego can suspend the judgements of its socialized operating system, to allow for decoding the world in a broader rather than strictly rational way, it becomes well positioned to collaborate with the wisdom of its greater soul while still in space-time.

An example of this is synchronicity. In every moment of every day the world around us echoes sounds, signs, and messages to guide and supplement our decisions, reflections, and understandings. Nearly every time I reach a conclusion I am treated to an affirmation or tweak in some form by the world around me that supplements my process.

This can take the form of a song in my head, a page in a book I randomly open to, a phone call, or the chirp of a bird. If my ego is humble it immediately considers the feedback the world delivers as it orients itself to decisions at hand. This is not about ego letting go of its rational facility but instead expanding it to include wisdom offered from beyond the rational for inclusion in its processing.

When ego reaches beyond self-importance to shore up its relationship with its greater wholeness the world is moved toward greater wholeness and integration as well. Decisions made by a clear headed ego, acting in consort with its greater soul, are sure to lead us to a real world of stable continuance.

As for our ego, its connection to its greater soul assures its confidence in being fully supported in its soul’s intent in this lifetime. Now that’s support beyond self-importance!

Humbly,

Chuck

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Chuck’s Place: Attention

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Energy travels many paths…
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

Energy is blood at the ethereal level. Blood is the carrier of the vital life source in the physical body. Energy is the active life force in the energy body. As sometimes we may require a blood transfusion to preserve life in the physical body so the energy body seeks energetic enhancement through exchanges of energy at the ethereal level.

Actually, we can notice this energetic transmission of energy on the physical plane through the exchanges of everyday life. Attention is a form of energy. When we give something our attention we transfer some of our vital energy to it, which then enlivens it in some form.

However subtle, we can often feel in some way that someone has their attention upon us. Often it might register as a sudden thought about the person who is thinking about us or actually looking at us, even from behind.

Human beings often interpret attention as a form of validation. Attention is currency. Like money, it fills us with value and worth.  This can result in attention seeking behavior. The greater the attention given, the greater the feeling of personal worth. This was the theorem Mark Zuckerberg exploited with the launching of Facebook: the more friends who like us, the better we feel about ourselves.

The Shamans of Ancient Mexico were well aware of the energetic dynamic of attention seeking behavior. In fact, they determined that our human obsession with validation monopolizes the lion’s share of our vital energy through our entire lifetime.

The experience of being validated may deliver a temporary  energetic boost. In actuality it proves to be an energetic drain when factoring in the amount of mental and emotional energy spent each day seeking attention and validation from the outside world.

The shamans teach us to become energy misers. They employ techniques to free themselves of the energy drain of upholding self-importance through external validation. They relish opportunities to release themselves from being offended, a major source of energy drain in human interaction.

If we can release ourselves from being offended by others whose narcissism prevents them from seeing or valuing us, in fact even causes them to bully us, then we are actually storing tremendous caches of energy. Releasing ourselves from any attachment to victimhood is central to this practice.

This doesn’t mean we simply turn the other cheek. In fact, we might have to actually fight back, but our approach is not driven by rage or revenge or preserving self-importance but is simply a pragmatic response to the challenge presented, based on what is possible in a given situation.

The energy gained and stored through losing self-importance allows that energy to be redeployed toward exploration of one’s true purpose for coming into this world, as well as the ability to explore life in other dimensions of infinity while still in physical form.

Best use of attention is to observe the tendency to be offended by others. Identifying it enables a process of detachment that both saves and frees energy for spiritual deployment.

Attentively,

Chuck