Tag Archives: 2012

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Innocence On The Altar

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Winter Solstice

A tragedy of unfathomable proportions has seized our nation, if not the world, as we arrive at the threshold of a new era on this Solstice day. We are all charged to take this journey with lost, sacrificed innocence and correct the course of human affairs.

What could it mean that a psychotic young man kills his mother and then so many young children? I suggest that this young man concretized and acted out, in a delusional way, an archetypal motif of individuation. I further suggest that this misapplied motif must be addressed on a mass human level, as well as on an individual level, in each and every one of us.

Every human is challenged to transition from childhood to adulthood, from the egocentric entitled stage of immaturity to adult responsibility. This is the Hero’s Journey, filled with many challenges.

One of the greatest challenges of the Hero’s Journey is to defeat childish dependence on the mother. Though many myths depict this as slaying the dragon or defeating the wicked witch, the core of this battle lies within the individual. At some point in our lives we must all ask the same question: Can I take adult responsibility for my life or am I caught in my childish dependency and entitlement demands to be taken care of?

The hero’s task is to slay his own childish dependency—NOT HIS MOTHER, NOT THE CHILD! The hero’s task is to become the adult parent to himself, and set firm but loving boundaries around the child within who is taken forward into adult life—NOT KILLED OFF!

The archetypes worm through us all…

The Newtown tragedy has mobilized tremendous energy to address the gun laws in our country. Too long has a greedy industry been allowed to fill its entitled pockets under the guise of protection and the Second Amendment. The truth is, these policies have been dictated by immature adults, who refuse adult responsibility. It’s time for adult boundaries to be set around the demands of an industry allowed to function with no limitations, like out-of-control children playing with guns.

We approach a fiscal cliff with similar concerns. The greed of undisciplined children not wanting to part with their toys—some of their wealth—can no longer rule. We need adult leadership, adult responsibility in all paying their fair share.

New York and California are poised to approve fracking. Even these bluest of blue states are willing to cave to the greed of the energy industry. Would adults allow toxic poisons to be poured into their bodies? Are we really going to allow our precious Earth to be poisoned this way, for the sake of insatiable greed for more money, cheaper energy? We need adult control. Children’s entitlement in control cannot sustain our environment.

The Holocaust had to be answered in a firm commitment: the rebirth of the State of Israel. However, this resolution, despite its many transformations, is frozen in structures impervious to a necessary two state solution. Once again, we find a child’s entitlement in control of policy as construction plans for new settlements are being made on disputed lands, in the midst of peace negotiations no less! Where is the adult in the house?

Moslem insistence on ancient practice, guarded in warlike fierceness, must soften to allow for change and evolution. How can the feminine, the source of renewal and rebirth, be so restricted in the modern world? Nonetheless, when we see the outcome of casualness toward our instinctive animal selves in our modern world, even in such institutions as Penn State, the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, and most recently in the Jewish Orthodoxy, we have to question humanity’s management of its instinctive nature and appreciate the intensity of restriction in the Moslem religion to regulate it. Violence, however, begets violence. We must find a new path of reconciliation.

We must all face our darkness…

Humankind must face the power of the forces that inhabit the darkness of our souls. Each individual must take the journey through the underground of their own deep unconscious. The instinctive forces that tragically erupt daily around the world are active in each and every one of us. Newtown must be answered by a commitment to take the inward journey, to recapitulate the hidden truths of our souls and revamp our instinctive energies to flow safely and responsibly into this new era now upon us.

Innocence has been sacrificed on the altar of this Solstice. Our nation is plunged into the abyss of mourning, soulfully seeking its lost innocence. We must journey now into the darkness and face the truths that have stolen away our innocence. May those innocent ones be the beacons, the light bearers that show us the way as we journey into our darkness, lighting the way into a new era for all of us.

Wishing for Peace on Earth and extending good will to all,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Becoming Your Own Best Father

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Chuck’s father playing taps for FDR on the day of his death…the day the nation lost its father…

When father appears in dreams or active imagination, look beyond personal father; look to the rules, judgments, beliefs, and attitudes that inwardly dominate your personality. Though he may bear the image of personal father, we all have an inner father that is our own, separate and distinct from the father of our conception.

Ego self is the child of the father. It remains for the maturing ego to confront the father’s rule. This takes the form of discovering the beliefs, attitudes, and judgments that govern perceptions and rule behaviors. This process can be quite challenging as the edicts of the father may be quite contrary to how the ego views itself and wants to be in the world. The energy and sternness of the inner father may be quite a formidable force and young ego might feel itself quite incapable of taking charge.

Sometimes ego self elects to blindly be ruled by the constraints of the father. Sometimes ego self identifies and emboldens itself with the opinions of father, never daring to discover its own true nature. Sometimes ego self, like a young Nero, assumes the emperor’s throne, assuming power with childlike exuberance and entitlement, becoming a little self-indulgent tyrant. This immature grab for power refuses to encounter and discriminate the wisdom of the fathers before assuming control, an obvious recipe for disaster, like the burning of Rome that ended Nero’s reign. Ultimately, ego self must assume the journey of true self-discovery, the Hero’s Journey, or remain forever a child, governed by the commandments of the almighty father.

It’s true!

Kronos, King of the Titans, ruled the heavens without challenge, as he forced his wife Rhea, to deliver each of their children directly to him upon their births for his consumption. Finally, Rhea, fed up with him—no pun intended—cleverly substituted a stone which she gave to Kronos instead of her next baby who upon birth was named Zeus. Ultimately, Zeus defeated his father and a new era was allowed to be born. Here is the obvious lesson of ego self taking control and ousting the father so that new life may flourish unencumbered.

As the Mayan calendar comes to a close, we too find ourselves on the brink of a new era, where old judgments, attitudes, beliefs, and rules are giving way to a new order. The signs are everywhere. The demise of the old Republican party protecting unbridled greed is one sure sign, as is the truth of global warming coming to the fore, as we face what we humans have done to our planet. In addition, gay marriage is now the law in many states; a Black president has been reelected, his rule no longer an impulsive fluke of the electorate. A woman president is undoubtedly next. These are all outward changes to appropriately wresting power from the domineering father of old and establishing new guidelines for a healthy and fulfilling life.

The Hero’s Journey requires that we venture beyond the father’s reach, that is, go beyond the conventional wisdom we’ve internalized that dictates the conclusions of our mind. We must be ready to accept full responsibility for discovering and taking charge of the truth, inner and outer, becoming like Zeus and defeating Kronos within us. We must also be prepared to accept the shattering that catapults us from the comfortable confines of socialization and the known; the shattering that is inevitable if we are to disengage father from our beings. We are not who we think we are; our minds are not our own until we make them so.

We must take ownership of our inner father, and become like Zeus defeating his father’s vicious entitlement. Ultimately, what that means is that we must confront all the beliefs and attitudes that have comfortably ruled us and protected us from our deeper truths and the greater unknown, both within and without. We must face our own destinies as individuals on our own journeys to fulfillment.

A new inner father breeds contentment…

Only through taking the Hero’s journey now, at this most energetic juncture in our lifetimes, can we participate in the world renewal and transformation that is indeed imbued in the energy of 2012. It’s a personal thing as well as a global thing—one massive interdependent whole delivering itself from the anachronistic father, into a new era.

On time,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: I’m Sorry For Your Loss

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I practice detachment…

Early Wednesday morning, as we sat and sipped our morning coffee, I remarked to Jan: “I wish I could say, had the election gone the other way, that I would have felt equally relaxed this morning.” But the truth is, I wouldn’t be, and so I engage this truth as an opportunity to practice detachment.

I think of Sixto Rodriguez,* plodding through life with equal reaction to lost stardom or hard labor, giving most of his money away; money and fame simply not relevant to his deeper fulfillment. He teaches that all outcomes are equal: simply live fully, impeccably, and without attachments.

As my models from Carlos Castaneda’s lineage always state: “I am a being who is going to die.” This awareness takes us beyond this life to the death that awaits equally in every moment, presenting the ultimate relativity of the world we find ourselves so deeply attached to. We are beings in eternal transition, in eternal flux.

Carlos once talked about the roles we choose to play in this world, urging us to play them to the fullest. Today he might have pointed to a Todd Akin and rather than judge him, he might have said: “Okay, be it—be the best, the most outlandish conservative you can be—be impeccable in playing out your chosen role; leave no stone unturned; hold nothing back!”

In an ultimate sense, Carlos, like Sixto, pointed to the illusory, transitory world we find ourselves in, that will, like

“Worn-out garments
[be] shed by the body:
[as] Worn-out bodies
Are shed by the dweller
Within the body. (-from the Bhagavad Gita)

And the dweller beyond the illusion of the body is the Atman, the eternal one inside all of us. Embracing the Atman, we release ourselves from attachment to the illusion, and can then play to the fullest, with sheer abandon and delight, the role we’ve chosen to live in this life. Don Juan suggests, however, that that role truly be a path of heart.

I am deeply appreciative of the Republicans—so deeply spirited—who so blatantly expressed themselves with such abandon. Only the full revelation of their heartfelt agenda could mobilize the conscience of a nation to reflect deeply and decide which path of heart the majority would take to responsibly lead this world into the future.

This is indeed a momentous 2012 decision, and humanity chose its course. There will be many more choices and challenges ahead, but a higher level of consciousness has risen above the sedating mass hypnosis of billionaire money. People discovered the truths of their own hearts and waited to vote, despite the obstacles.

And so, for those who lost—I’m sorry for your loss—and I’m deeply appreciative of the necessary role you played so vigorously in advancing all of us, an integrated whole, into a future of real possibility, beyond the Mayan calendar end. We have advanced, consensually agreeing to further this dream on solid ground.

Chuck

* Sixto Rodriguez refers to the man presented in the movie Searching for Sugar Man, previously mentioned here and here.

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Crossing The Bridge

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I dream of old places…

Sleep is a time of rejuvenation, of quieting the mind, but also of spiritual exploration in dreaming. And so, for the past two nights I have set my intent according to the advice of the channeled message on Monday, which you can read here. I ask my body to acquiesce to sleep as a healthy and invigorating necessity, to accept the cyclical nature of it. I ask my mind to shut down but my awareness to keep tabs on the lessons of my dreams. And then I allow my spirit free reign to take me on journeys.

The first night I dreamed of being in old places, in the house I grew up in, but I was there with Chuck. Men were outside the door, telling us we had to leave for 24 hours while new gas lines were installed in the street and into the house. It was demanded that we leave immediately so they could get on with their assignment. There was an infant in the house with us. We were not allowed to take her with us, and so we prepared to leave her to her fate, to be euthanized by the gas that would surely leak into the house and kill her. It was simply taken for granted that we must do as told; without question we simply acquiesced. We did give the baby a sedative though, to soften the blow, and arranged for one of the men to give her another in a little while. As we prepared to leave the house, I saw the gas men standing outside in their white lab coats, with their clipboards and their hoses ready to hook up, and suddenly I knew we couldn’t leave.

“No, this is wrong,” I said. “We have to go back in, we can’t let this happen, it’s wrong. It’s also wrong to leave the baby to this fate.”

And so we turned back into the house, roused the baby, and sat down with her in our laps, both of us realizing that we had almost done the unthinkable; we had almost let our baby be killed because someone told us she could not live. Magically the gas men disappeared at this point, no more outside pressure was applied, no need for us to comply.

As I pondered the dream, I began to understand that everything in the dream was about changing from an old to a new way of listening, thinking, acting, and reacting, and for taking full responsibility for what we know is right. New methods of energy must be invested in if we are not to kill our spirits—individually and collectively—the spirit of our earth, as well as our inner spirits. I understood that what we do with our minds and our bodies, what we allow our governments to do, as well as what we are doing to our planet, is at a crucial point. If we are not alert, everything we care about will be destroyed. On many levels, my dream was telling me that we must think differently now; we must refuse the missives of the petty tyrants, and move forward in completely new directions. Nothing that is old is acceptable anymore. It just isn’t going to cut it.

I refused to be sabotaged by outside energy in this dream, and in refusing it so abruptly it turned away without further incident. We were no longer bothered; the petty tyrants of the world could not budge us. At the end of the dream, Chuck and I were left holding a happy baby, eyes bright and focused, letting us know we had made the right decision. All that matters now, in the dream and in reality, is that we continue to focus on our spiritual selves, making decisions that are right in advancing the vibrant life force in all of us, so full of real potential.

The next night, last night, I set the same intent, to let my body rest while my spirit took me dreaming. I dreamed all night long and when I sensed it was just about time to wake up I asked my awareness to tell me of my dreams, for even while still asleep I sensed no recall. Suddenly I found myself standing on a bridge, a small bridge that crossed a desolate gray landscape, murky and swampy. I knew that my dreams of the night were out there in the swampy landscape. I could see them, including some wooden wagon wheels, sticking up out of the mud. I knew that the details didn’t matter at this point, that everything I had dreamed, the messages of the night, were already inside me. I knew that the only thing that mattered was the bridge I was on.

“This is the only awareness you need,” I said to myself. “You’ve learned what you need to learn, it’s all inside you. It’s time to take it forward now, to cross the bridge, to leave everything else behind and make the crossing.”

No view of what is to come…

I had no view of where the bridge was leading me, into darkness as far as I could see, but I had no doubt of the necessity of crossing the bridge. It’s time to cross the bridge. This was the imperative of my awareness, as it instructed me to leave the details behind and go forward.

As I took my first step across the bridge, the horizon lightened, and in the next step it lightened some more. By the time I woke up I had walked to the middle of the bridge and the sun was just beginning to rise. I could see that I was making the right choice. It is time to cross the bridge!

We’re all standing on the same bridge, it’s 2012 after all, and the energy of this time of change is undeniable. It’s our responsibility as beings of awareness, as seekers of what is right, to take what we’ve been learning, in waking and dreaming, and cross the bridge, knowing that everything we need is inside us. Our teachers have taught us well, our inner teachers and our outer teachers. Now they are asking us to become all that we have worked so hard to become, to become the teachers now too and lead the way to a new world. It’s time to stop listening to the gas men, to the pundits and the old guard knocking on the door, telling us that we must do as they say. We must listen instead to our hearts. We must refuse the old ways, the old thoughts, the old ideas that are no longer viable in today’s world, and turn to what is right for now. We must all accept responsibility for moving us forward.

We must accept that we are the student, the teacher, the infant, and the bridge too, but we must also acknowledge that we are the gas men and the old guard as well. But the energy that we channel and our dreams are telling us that we must live through our spirits now, accepting full responsibility for them, allowing them to grow in the real world by taking them out of our dreams and taking them across the bridge that now lies before us.

Crossing the bridge means living out that spirit to the fullest, telling it like it is, refusing the old, waking up—even at the last second, as we seem to be doing at this critical time in the evolution of our world—and accepting the grand opportunity that lies before us: to enact real change. One person at a time, by refusing to live our lives according to someone else’s plan, by taking a path of heart, we can change the world.

We do all stand on the same bridge now. It’s time to take all that we’ve learned is wrong and turn it right, not by looking back or going back, but by moving on to something new and totally different. With compassion for all living beings, we must do what’s right.

I take my dreams seriously, for I know they are my deeper self, my ancient self, speaking words of wisdom and truth. I have been trusting their guidance for a long time now and in my own life I can say that taking the bridge to change has indeed led me on amazing, transformative journeys. In fact, I am living in a totally different world now. By aligning with my spirit’s intent for life and taking the path that appeared before me, I changed my entire world. Now it’s time for all of us to take it to the next level, I see that in my dream.

I treasure you…

I must personally take the next step, the same step that we must all take. I am not only me, an individual, but I am also you, and what I do impacts you. This is the lesson of the ancients, the lessons of my dreams, and the lessons I have learned as I have traveled the paths of a seeking life.

Cross the bridge now for self and others. Don’t stop. Each step lightens the way.

Crossing the bridge,
Jan

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: On Thin Ice

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Beware…thin ice!

The eyes of Capital peer hungrily at the melting Arctic caps, pondering what fossil treasures might lie beneath. I hear Jung’s cautionary note: Beware the slumbering gods of the deep. Never forget the awakening of Wotan, the ancient pagan god that broke through the cracking ice of Christendom and swept through the German psyche in the firestorm of Nazism, erasing centuries of civilization. Beware the thin ice that Reason rests upon at this moment in the progression of 2012.

We are reminded daily now of the hair-trigger balance of world order as an amateur internet film ignites the ire of the Middle East, as Newsweek throws brush on the fire with a provocative cover, as Netanyahu sees fit to overtly threaten Iran. Romney openly stokes the rage of the other seemingly emasculated 47%, pointing a finger at all the non-white male scapegoats. And thus, the slumbering energies of some wrathful, vindictive, punitive, licentious, greedy male god is gathering momentum and being openly invited to take full control of the American psyche.

The notion that REASON is enough to forestall a Romney coup is naive. We are dealing with a highly unstable collective psyche, a highly unstable collective race at war with itself. Romney’s frankness has merely laid completely bare the civil war within ourselves, within our world.

Is “survival of the fittest,” “best man wins,” “winner takes all,” to be our evolutionary path? Or are we an interdependent world that must take responsibility for all of its parts in order to survive and evolve?

Actually, both sides of this argument have truths to offer. Within the psyche, the ego must establish itself, must be fit and in control. Without a fit ego there is no survival; without a fit ego there is psychosis. However, an ego that cares only for its own needs and wants and interests evokes the rage and revolt of the rest of all that we are. We are also mind-body-spirit; that is, we are ego-animal-spirit. And if ego ignores or neglects the animal self, the body and all its instincts will revolt through disease, psychosomatic symptoms, rampant instinctual disorders like mass sexual abuse, etc. If ego ignores its spirit self, spirit self and spirit world will cast life into addictions, compulsions, and depression. Ego must take its rightful place in balancing the interdependent parts of the self.

Recapitulation is the ego’s willingness to reconcile with spirit and body self. In recapitulation we free our body selves, our instinctual selves, and open to the fullness of our energy spirit selves. Through recapitulation, ego evolves the fullest potential of the self, as an interdependent whole.

We must take responsibility for our individual lives as separate egos, fit and willing to take the journey into self, a self much greater than the sum of its parts, particularly that of its ego part. This is the formula for resolution, both on an individual and on a world level.

Our world rests on thin ice due to an alienated collective ego that has neglected both nature and spirit. Rebalance will happen one way or another, but if we take up the challenge and seek personal wholeness and balance, we strengthen the whole world.

The real truth that we must face is that we are all victims. Life in this world is a socialization of fragmentation that repeatedly victimizes the truth. In recapitulation, we take responsibility; we are not victims of our circumstances but our own liberators.

Only through assuming responsibility for the full truth—that of all our interdependent parts—can we advance ourselves, our species, our world, and skate off the thin ice and get back onto solid ground.

Beware! Thin ice!
Chuck