Tag Archives: archetypes

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Endurance

Leave a comment
Kundalini energy rising…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

I would be neglectful indeed, in my duty as a licensed psychotherapist, were I not to validate the obvious current world predicament: walking the razor’s edge of latent collective psychosis. I would also be neglectful in my duty as a transpersonal psychotherapist were I not to share my vision of the multidimensional drama that veils our vision, just as the sands of the Sahara now blanket the world. Beyond the veil of ignorance coated by those desert sands lies the path of heart, the path of our redemption.

Psychosis, in modern psychological nomenclature, depicts a mental state where the ego, as the central governing force of the personality, sinks into the abyss of unconscious forces, as the personality becomes a rudderless ship taken over by the turbulent forces of nature. That violent nature, generally subdued by the matador, is overrun by the bull, the ultimate surge of a bull market, an inflation that refuses to yield to the axiom: what goes up must come down.

In earlier times, when modern psychology was expressed in spiritual terms, our current situation would be understood as the activation of the gods, what we now term the archetypes, competing with their enormous instinctual energies, in a game of chess with humans as their channeled pawns.

From a transpersonal perspective, the war we are in is ego vs archetype. When archetype possesses ego we risk psychosis. Ego’s challenge in such an onslaught, is to endure. To endure is to resist the enticing power and energy of the archetypes, the fine print of which is a truly Mephistophelian contract: total possession, loss of soul, slavery to the activated archetype.

Archetypes are spirit entities that program a species, the deeply subconscious patterns that rule instinctual life. They enjoyed total domination for millennia until the birth of human consciousness, an event that introduced the possibility of refusing or manipulating the emotional intensity and compulsion of instinct.

This power wrestled from the archetypes upset their balance and control over human life. Suppression and repression of instinct renders archetypes dormant but not dead. Jung wrote often, before the outbreak of WWII, that Wotan, the restless wanderer god of pagan origin, was stirring from the primordial depths, seizing control of the collective German psyche.

Inspiration from the archetypes seeks outlet in human life and is channeled, by human egos, in highly emotional spirited messages. The power and energy of these spirit forces are contagious, stirring frenzy in the masses. Their identifying mark is their disdain for reason, the human ego prison guard of instinctual energies. There is no reasoning with an archetype, instinct alone prevails.

Endurance is the capacity of the ego to weather the storms of passion without falling prey to possession. From a chakra perspective this is accomplished by containing the kundalini energy, the energy of the archetypes, forcing it to rise to the level of the heart chakra.

Pragmatically, this means refusing to engage the emotions of anger and sadness that feed the archetypes. Instead, go inward and exert calm over the excited kundalini emotion that begs outlet in excited action. Calm the autonomic nervous system with its typically unregulated dominance over the body. Send its energy through the breath to the cool respite of the heart chakra.

The heart chakra is the direct link to the Buddhic plane, the home of truth, love, and compassion. Kundalini at the level of the heart acquiesces to serve the High SOUL, as the true guide to right action. The pressure of world survival now is to rise to the level of action in conformance with true need over subjective want, it’s that simple.

All humans of all political persuasions are subject to this rising tide of kundalini energy seeking refuge in planetary survival. May the eyes of the masked and the unmasked meet in loving embrace.

From a transpersonal perspective, our current brush with psychosis is really our collective walking along the razor’s edge above the abyss, as we seek the solidity of higher ground.

Humanity is charged with raising the spiritual level of the planet beyond the blind control of the archetypes. The heart center is our destiny. May we endure this grueling transformation fueled with love for all. All for one, one for all.

With loving endurance,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: No Worry

Leave a comment

Stay focused on the truth of the light…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Worry issues from the mind, located in the astral body, in the form of a thought, wrapped in emotion, that is transmitted to the central nervous system of the physical body, which then activates a biological response for action. This often results in the sensorial experience of shallow breath and racing pulse, the very definition of anxiety.

The genesis of a thought that first attracts the attention of the mind, the mental component of the astral body, has multiple points of origin. Thoughts are independent energetic units that roam the universe in search of receptive minds willing to seed their potential. Human beings are natural storytellers, always in search of a fertile thought.

Thoughts can also be self generated by the mind itself, particularly in individuals who live mostly in their minds, largely dissociated from their physical bodies as they navigate life in abstract thought.

Thoughts can also issue from the largely subconscious section of the mind in the regions beneath consciousness. These include the rejected parts of self, what Jung called the shadow, as well as the preprogrammed archetypes that run the programs of the physical body.

The subconscious also houses the history of all human experience, what is esoterically called the Akashic library, what Jung called the shared collective unconscious of humankind. Psychics, like Edgar Cayce, tap this source of knowledge in trance in search of healing prescriptions for the afflicted.

At the superconscious level, thoughts issue from the transcendental realm of the high SOUL, wisdom and guidance offered, generated through the solicitation of consciousness seeking truth.

When a thought is presented to, or generated by, the mind, a decision is made whether to focus continued attention upon the thought or to dismiss it from further consideration. Generally, the thought arrives with enough of an energetic charge to attract attention. That charge is a feeling; the thought might be pleasing or potentially frightening.

If consciousness chooses to attach its continued concentration upon the thought, it gains in emotional momentum, as a potential drama begins to formulate in the mind. This abstract astral body play attracts a physical audience, as emotions activate chemical processes in the body that take on physical form. These can include tightening of muscles, racing heartbeat, shortness of breath, headache, etc.

Subjectively, these sensations are experienced as a myriad of feelings and emotions that gain in intensity as the mind continues to allow the drama to deepen its plot. The worry of many a sleepless night is a function of this runaway train of thought and emotion, as it writes its story on the astral plane and engages the body as its captive audience.

The crux of worry is attachment. The core goal of all meditation is non-attachment to thought, a formidable goal given the attractive power of  thoughts, incessantly seeking a home through grabbing the mind’s attention.

The time we live in is rampant with thoughts of all persuasions, crudely pressing to infiltrate our minds. How challenging to avoid these thoughts that so quickly activate intense emotions. Emotions are the energizers of action. Calls to action abound, constantly bombarding the mind’s autonomy.

The most rudimentary action one can take to free oneself from such influence is to limit exposure to the marketplace of thoughts that seek every avenue to attach to one’s mind. For instance, limiting one’s exposure to news and social media.

Of course, to be oblivious to the events of the world is not recommended, however, regulating exposure time can stop the development of unnecessary pictures that merely drain vital energy. Furthermore, through saving one’s attentive energy from outer influence, one is available to guidance that is always synchronistically available but rarely received, as all energy is monopolized by abstract possibilities.

Synchronicity is guidance from the superconscious, the fourth dimension of the high SOUL. Reading this energy from infinity, in all of nature, often presents a perspective of such depth that the mind and emotion of the astral body sends deeply calming impulses to the physical body. The nightmare of thought is branded illusion, as one is enveloped by love and awe.

Trust deepens in the guidance of the light of the high SOUL, as synchronicity is recognized as the true harbinger of the truth. Even without any knowledge of outside events, synchronicity will safely and appropriately guide action.

If thoughts, like weeds, manage to find their way into the mind’s garden, weeding involves refusal to nourish the unwanted intruder. This calls upon the discipline of shifting one’s attention away from the developing plot. Thoughts require the active participation of the mind’s attention to continue to write their lines. Unattended thoughts either wither and die or leave, seeking new takers to feed their hunger for life.

One shift could be to focus one’s astral attention on the physical body, with the intent of deep relaxation and calming suggestions. The body is largely governed by its astral body partner’s suggestions. Positive affirmations result in physical calm.

Another practical shift is to walk in a different direction, literally changing one’s physical posture and direction. The mental focus accompanying the shift is the repeated mantra, NO WORRY.

Take command of the mind’s capacity for attention. Consider orienting that attention to the communications of the high SOUL, passing on its directives to the physical body. And, if you happen to get caught in a worry, no worry. Shift, find the light, and follow it.

No worry,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s place: Twice Born

Leave a comment

“Girl in a Large Hat” c. 1645 – c. 1650
by Cesar Boetius van Everdingen
– Rijks Museum

To be born means to be born physically, from mother. This event triggers the activation of archetypes that guide parents in their childrearing practices. Archetypes are latent inborn schemas, which, when activated, direct human behavior.

The powerful parent/child archetypes interact to provide a foundation for the developing personality. For instance, to be held when crying helps a child feel secure that the world will respond to its emotional needs.

Archetypes define needs and expectations in relationships. The archetypes of mother and young child cover a period of need and dependency in childhood, with the entitled expectation that the  basic needs of hunger and safety be met.

The archetypes that dominate family life are so powerful that very often they dominate all of one’s life on earth. Mother’s Day was celebrated but a couple of days ago. The mother archetype is indeed the most powerful archetype. Mother is the source, period, of all human life. Echoes of one’s relationship with mother fundamentally permeate all of one’s relationships in life.

Most mothers are, as Winnicott coined the expression, “good enough.” This means that the basic imperatives of the archetypes are met, helping a child achieve rudimentary adulthood. But archetypes are unyielding in their insistence upon perfection. Thus, many mothers are forever laden with guilt for not having done enough for their children.

But is mother ever allowed to retire from mothering? Must she nurture and be defined only as mother, for her entire life? Must she deny her full personhood, in lieu of her motherly duties, once her children are reared? At what point do adult children and parents become peers, equal as traveling companions in this great mystery of life, death, and beyond?

On the flip side are children, well along in chronological years, who feel terribly shortchanged and resentful that their basic needs in childhood were not met. The power of this sense of inadequacy and emotional need keeps one attached and dependent, sometimes for a lifetime. The archetype can be unrelenting in its entitled demand for its full due.

Adult children and their parents may remain embroiled in interactive patterns that were appropriate for the developmental period of young childhood, as they attempt to fulfill unmet needs. Unfortunately, once the critical period of childhood is over, these archetypal patterns cease to deliver the desired effect. In fact, they tend to intensify both dependency and despondency.

All adults must assume full responsibility for their journeys, regardless of the archetypal misfirings of their childhood. This is not a judgment; it’s a developmental fact. Psychological development in adulthood rests in the hands of the individual, not in the family that reared them.

The real challenge for adulthood, for all parties, is to obtain release from the anachronistic archetypes that bind them. This actually is the function of the initiation rites of both ancient and modern religions; to provide release from archetypes that interfere with transition into new roles in the life cycle.

Recapitulation allows one the soul retrieval journey to square with the archetypes that bind old hurts, needs, resentments, and blame. With recapitulation, one takes full ownership of every event of one’s life, as one reclaims all of one’s energy stuck in those old dramas.

This practice frees one of the archetypal bindings, opening the door to being born again, or twice born. To be twice born is to achieve psychological and emotional maturity and independence.

To be twice born is a spiritual birth, which happens beyond childhood where the primary archetypes that ruled family life are released, as one takes on full responsibility for one’s life as an independent physical and energetic being. To be twice born is to awaken and mature into the spiritual dimension of life in human form.

This is the journey of spirit, for which we prepare in our second birth. In our time, that journey has opened through the widespread experience of the energy body, both in our dreams and in our waking experiences out-of-body. To open to this journey we must transmute our archetypal relationships.

With detachment from archetypal binding, gained through recapitulation, we fully embody, within ourselves, the mother and father we need to be, for ourselves, to navigate our soul’s adventure in infinity. In our time, the door has opened to explore this realm while still alive in a physical body.

For the twice born, this is the deepest intent, while fully loving all, as they undertake their own journeys of discovery. Sending love to all.

One in Spirit,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Tempering the Warrior’s Spirit

Leave a comment

The calmness you seek is all around you… and within you…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The intent of the warrior’s spirit is freedom. COVID-19 is a predatory virus that has taken control of the world, vastly limiting freedom. The human spirit is currently gathering steam to blow through the bottleneck of this quarantine retort.

This is a natural reaction of spirit, to push beyond all limitations. Some explorers push beyond the limits of the physical body to explore their spirit potential. Others stay focused on transcending all supposed boundaries and limitations imposed by the physical world.

The warriors of Carlos Castaneda’s lineage discovered that the most valuable practice to obtain freedom was not in great feats of power in this world, or in any other. Freedom can best be obtained through the tempering of spirit, they discovered, through encounters with a formidable tyrant, such as COVID-19.

The first lesson in such an encounter is to willingly accept COVID-19’s power to infect us all. Our human self-importance has been greatly checked, in respect to the deadly power of this smallest of microbes. Our entire world’s familiar way of life has had to be tabled, denying us the basics of human social interaction.

Losing self-importance enables us to more objectively see what we are up against. To be offended by the predator costs us cascades of emotional energy, spent to no avail. The predator thrives on our offense, both in terms of the emotional energy we deliver to it, and in the co-mingling we may engage in, in defiance of necessary limitation, whereby providing potential new hosts to the predator.

Humbling of the warrior spirit equips the warrior to face the unknown, without the veil of self-importance. Freed of prejudice, the scientist in all of us is on the road to solution. However, great detachment is required to not fall prey to the battle cry of unfairness. In a predatory universe, unfairness is a dominant of reality.

The battle with unfairness is formidable. It is our core human predicament. We are all saddled with the reality that we must attach to this world to survive, yet we must fully release it in death. Where is the fairness in these diametrically opposed demands?

The greatest obstacle to our freedom is the emotional energy the predator can drown us in. When we become emotionally activated by the limits imposed by the predator, we may become possessed by fear, sadness, and rage. The warrior, on the other hand, becomes attuned to the triggers of these emotions and, while not denying them, actively refuses to attach to them.

Fear is a natural reaction to perceived threat. Fear, however, is generally greatly augmented by attachment to thought and imagination. The practice of taking charge of the mind, specifically where it exercises its focus and attachment, can keep fear in modest proportion. Thus, a warrior does not let fear take over the mind.

Sadness is a legitimate emotion, however, a bottomless pit of sadness is inhuman. One caught in this place is likely channeling an entity, such as an archetype, that seeks expression through possession of a human life. To dis-identify with such an archetype is to maintain one’s humanness. Thus, a warrior refuses to relinquish personal power.

Rage is the extreme of anger, often sparked by being overwhelmed by feeling offended. Beyond the affront to self-importance, it’s natural to want to take an action, such as setting a boundary, or acting in self-defense during an objective attack. A warrior strives always to act as fits a situation, devoid of feeling offended.

The world’s encounter with COVID-19 offers all warriors on the path to freedom the opportunity to temper their spirits, in preparation for a successful journey into the unknown. The pitfalls of self-importance and emotional extremes are tempered, as clarity, sobriety, and practicality guide the warrior’s  journey instead.

Use this opportunity to go with the flow, and restore the magic of being a warrior in this wonderful world at this awesome time.

Tempering spirit,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Losing The Weight of Possession

Leave a comment
Entities are everywhere…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

To be elevated or lowered in thought and emotion is generally the consequence of identification with a power other than the self. There are many not-I influences that, unknowingly to consciousness, usurp identity, mental processes, moods, and actions.

On a collective level, we are in the midst of a world rapidly seized by a contagion of beliefs and intense emotions sparking heated rhetoric and threatening behavior. On one level this is the consequence of archetypal projections upon leadership.

The ruler of the personality is predisposed to absorb and mirror the attitudes of outer rulers, be they royalty, presidents, or popes. Even personalities that reject identification with leadership figures are not immune to infection, as they find themselves obsessed with revolutionary, depressed, or helpless overreactions.

Within the personality, beyond the I of the known self, are layers of influence that emanate from genetic predisposition, karma, and the collective unconscious, replete with its powerful archetypes seeking to infiltrate daily life. Contrary to the gods of yesteryear, who were housed on some faraway mountain, these archetypes quake from within, generating anxiety, terror, rage, and euphoria.

We might, for instance, awaken with a questioning thought about the meaning of the words another person had spoken in an encounter the day before. Subtly and suddenly, the thought mushrooms into a powerful conspiracy that ignites tremendous emotions of anger, fear, and protest. The ego then becomes intensely focused on plans to survive, attack, or circumvent the imagined onslaught.

In fact, the ego might find itself under the spell of an inner archetype that has dressed outer reality in the garments of the drama it seeks to enact. And what role will ego be assigned, victim or hero?

If we have the presence of mind to not get overly entranced by the lure of the drama, and revisit its status later in the day, we might find ourselves exclaiming, “What could have possessed me to see it that way? Wow, did I blow that out of proportion!”

In this case, the ego, by not succumbing to the coup of the archetype, retains its energy for reflection, differentiation, and control of the personality. Though impulse might at times save the day, it often masks the will of not-I influences that are seeking a play in human life.

The Shamans of Ancient Mexico characterize these extraneous energies as entities, who feast upon the high frequency energy of human emotion. They counsel that entities have largely only the power to infiltrate thought and perception, which may indeed generate intense fear, but have no real power to harm.

Whether seen as activated archetypes or actual entities, the guidance to the ego is the same: stay sober and grounded. Archetypes and entities seek our energy, our life force. They are merchants of exaggeration who cater to our boredom and our weaknesses. Refuse their offerings, shoo them away, turn in another direction, breathe, use dialogue to affirm the self.

Address boredom by aligning with your own personal Spirit: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Practice bringing ego to the guidance of the heart center. There it will be energized by its true path of heart.

Our weaknesses are demonstrated to us by the archetypes and entities that play and prey upon us. Archetypes offer to solve human dilemmas when ego is at an impasse, or is simply in a lackadaisical state. Entities, as well, can only hook our attention where there is a gap in our adaptation, its opening to enter and play upon our fears and wants.

Refuse the archetypes, refuse the entities, but do have gratitude for being shown by them what needs to be addressed.

When we shore up our weaknesses, through the guidance of our true spirit, we are freed to journey, weightlessly, on a most fulfilling journey in this life, in this world, and beyond.

With gratitude,

Chuck