Tag Archives: attachment

Chuck’s Place: The Desire Body

All is Love… Love is All…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Someone once asked Carlos Castaneda if we should recapitulate our current love relationships. He paused, and with a shy smile gently replied, “Not yet.”

Carlos knew that recapitulation would take the buzz out of love and desire at the level of archetypal projection, that which fuels the dance of relationship in the physical world. He wanted us to savor our projections, before the personal dissolved into the transpersonal knowing of the all-pervasive impersonal divine, that which maya clothes in the unique fabrics of this world.

Transpersonal love simply can’t limit itself because, at that level of pure truth, all is love. Carlos didn’t want us to have to suffer too soon the essential loss of specialness that our local illusions provide, the puppy love of our desire body.

Strictly speaking, the desire body is the emotional component of the astral body, the energy body component of our Soul in human life. The astral body is the home of ego-Soul, composed of both mental and emotional components. The astral body is the conscious personality that navigates waking life in the body. At night that same astral body unhinges from the physical body and journeys in the dreams of its desires. Freud called dreams the land of wish fulfillment. Pretty astute, from a transpersonal perspective!

Emotion is the fuel of action. A thought or idea from the mental plane requires the motivation of emotion to manifest. Emotion has a magnetic charge. A want  is a mental idea imbued with a feeling tone that magnetically attracts, via the law of magnetic attraction, the object of its intent to us, or us to it.

As I sit and watch a show the thought or image of popcorn might appear in the mind’s eye. If the thought or image is then imbued with the energetic momentum of desire, I might pause the show, get up, and make the popcorn! A mental thought that lacks an emotional engine is not likely to result in physical action.

Hence the guidance, don’t attach to unwanted thought. Attachment is thought which, when given continued attention, becomes strengthened by the emotional energy of desire. Sustained at this level, desire ignites into blind compulsion.

Sex is a powerfully wired instinctive mandate at the subconscious, little soul’s level of body management. Cyclical release programs of both hormones and neurotransmitters, in concert with external environmental cues, trigger powerful waves of desire that inundate consciousness from the depths of the body unconscious.

Clearly, nature’s most primal imperative is survival via propagation of the species. Archetypal imagery imbued with the highly charged emotional energy of desire dominate mind and action. The power of these archetypes to overwhelm even the most apparently spiritually committed is evident in the Vatican’s recent conference on sexual abuse.

But what about sex beyond the childbearing years? As nature’s cyclical programs recede, sex is still possible. However, it requires the higher involvement of consciousness at the ego-Soul level of the astral body, with both its mental and desire components needing to be engaged, to stir the body physical. Sex at this stage is far more a function of choice than biological imperative.

Although habitual mental patterns of sexual preoccupation and expectation may persist at this stage, the emotional energy of compulsion becomes freed for higher refinement. From a chakra perspective this is the raising of kundalini energy from the sexual and will centers to that of the heart, where a more conscious love becomes possible.

Oh course, sexual union may indeed be a concomitant of love at the heart chakra center. However, at this later stage, its overriding motivation is genuine connection and affection. This continued refinement of love ultimately flowers into universal love, as one clears the channel to the oneness of High SOUL in infinity. Reaching this state of love while still in human form is possible, though quite formidable a challenge as well.

As love descends from its purest state at the High SOUL level, where it exists as the cohesive energy that binds all into oneness, it becomes increasingly separate and personal, eventuating in the desire body of human form. The major opus of human life is to refine the physical and astral dimensions of the desire body to ascend to true love of another and, ultimately, love for all. That truly represents coming home.

This is the major play on our current world stage. Can the collective human desire body rise to the level of interconnected love in this hour of greatest need? It will, because it must, but when and how has yet to be written. We are the active side of infinity here, and the heart of every individual is the active playing field of needed change. Synthesize pure love.

With love,

Chuck

Soulbyte for Tuesday September 4, 2018

In order to change the self something may have to go. Something may have to be sacrificed. In order to live a more balanced life something may have to be left behind, for if you take it with you it will continue to interfere and progress will be slow to impossible. To move on quickly it may be time to finally shed that which you adhere to, love, and treasure above all else. And yet, what is it really but an attachment? Is it time to finally let it go so that you can really change and become what you have dreamed of? A dream is just a dream until you do something to make it real. Ready to step into the true reality of your dream? It’s up to you. You have the power, only you.

-From the Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Chuck’s Place: From Specialness To Super Love

One of our animal co-inhabitants... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
One of our animal co-inhabitants…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

What distinguishes us from our animal co-inhabitants on this planet is ego. Animals live and limit their lives through their neatly defined instincts, which tell them when it’s time to eat, procreate, and defend, and when it’s time to turn off those instinctive drives. Animals don’t overeat, overpopulate, or over defend.

In contrast, the human animal, burdened with the added instinct of ego, must contend with the ego’s instinct to exert its power over the other basic instincts, as well as obtain a high level of validation from others as to its value, lovability, and importance.

Being the newest instinct on the evolutionary block, ego suffers from a basic immaturity in self-regulation and a deep insecurity as to its true worth as it takes up its place among the older, more well-established instincts housed in the human body.

The ego longs to feel special in an effort to override its deep uncertainty over its ability to manage the personality, the body, and the overall direction of its human life. Its insatiable need for validation draws it to seek constant attention from the world to assure it of its worth and desirability.

In fact, what we call love, co-opted by ego, is often an attempt to fill this deep hole of insecurity with a sense of specialness mirrored through the attention obtained through a partner. In fact, ego considers it its inalienable, birth-given right to feel special. The ego’s litmus test for true love is the ability of another to make it feel special.

Often the ego gives with the hidden motive of being validated for its “selflessness,” as well as to be given to in return. Carlos Castaneda never tired of pointing out this merchant mentality underlying our definition of love. He challenged us to consider that true love was a blank check, given not from a place of codependency but from a purely loving place, no strings attached.

Robert Monroe defined this refinement of love as Super Love (SL). He writes: “SL is a continuous radiation, totally nondependent upon like reception or any other form of return whatsoever. SL is.”

Super Moon Love... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Super Moon Love…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Monroe learned, during his many explorations of life beyond the body, that SL is an energy that exists throughout the dimensions, beyond life in this world.

However, life in this world offers one of the best places to access and refine SL, through the experiential evolutionary learning opportunities available through our many incarnations in this world.

The raw material of Super Love is to be found in the nurturing, sexual, romantic, and dependent relationships we long for and experience in our many lives and roles in this world.

The utter necessity for emotional attachment to begin life and to thrive in this world, coupled with the ego’s long path to maturity as it grapples with its identity and value, causes it to grasp for love with its brand of specialness for many lifetimes.

Ultimately, the insatiability of its quest and the emptiness of its fulfillment set the stage for the ego to come clean and admit the difference between its neediness and true Super Love.

Once this is realized, the ego it also ready to realize that the latent energy of SL has been veiled behind its quest for specialness all along. Ego comes to understand that attachment is really an attempt to solve its insecurities and that being special has really been all about assuaging those insecurities.

Once ego is ready to give up its ventures in specialness it gains access to the radiance of Super Love.

What it's all about... - Art & Photo by Jan Ketchel
What it’s all about…
– Art & Photo by Jan Ketchel

Super Love is totally detached from specialness and reciprocity. Super Love is. It radiates. It isn’t offended. It encompasses all.

We all have it. We all are it. And if we are here, we are also deeply engaged in the process of refining it.

SL,

Chuck

Quote from Robert Monroe, Far Journeys, p. 257.

Chuck’s Place: Beyond Story

What stories am I telling myself today? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
What stories am I telling myself today?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Reality awaits us, just beyond the stories that present themselves rapid-fire from the inner “press” of the mind. When the shamans urge us to “suspend judgment,” they are referring to this function of mind that so quickly organizes a story around the scantest detail perceived and fleshed out by the mind. We are then drawn to attach to the story generated by the mind; in other words: to live as if the story were reality.

The “judgment” here is the storyline we have bought into and energetically invested in as emotions and thoughts emerge to guide our actions in accordance with our judgment or interpretation of reality.

So much of our vital energy is bound up in our interpretations of reality that we find ourselves encased in the familiar yet largely false stories we tell ourselves over and over again. Our intent gets bound up in upholding those stories too; or simply put, our intent generates our self-fulfilling story prophecy in our experiences of everyday reality.

For instance, one story might be that I don’t feel valuable or lovable. This story becomes reflected in the eyes of everyone I meet, their actions mirroring the story I tell myself. My intent generates the reality of my story. This story then becomes the filter for my life. All approaching energy, or the unfolding of daily life, becomes automatically formatted and neatly tailored to fit into and validate the truth of my story. This then becomes my reality.

Our stories become knitted together with such regularity or habit that we come to rest our identity upon them, the familiar tales we tell ourselves. They become like family. Thus, regardless of how limiting or unfulfilling our stories leave us, we remain compulsively drawn and attached to them for a sense of known definition in this world.

Tread lightly as you decide to release yourself from the bondage of your core stories. Change, regardless of how beneficial, often feels deeply disturbing to the security of known stories, as they are challenged to reveal their true identity and their true validity in our lives.

Time to spend our energy on what really matters... - Photo by Chuck Ketchel
Time to spend our energy on what really matters…
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

On the other hand, every time we stop the flow of energy from attaching to a story that flirts for our attention we accrue that energy in our spiritual savings account. When enough energy has been saved we are indeed freed to discover the true nature of who we really are as we spend our energy exploring true reality, the reality always present and coexistent but generally filtered out by our all-encompassing stories.

Suspend judgment. Explore the true nature of reality as it presents and unfolds in oncoming time. What an amazing true story awaits!

No stories allowed!
Chuck

Chuck’s Place: Why Am I Here?

Denial is strong. But it hardly matters. The changes the channels have forecast are indeed upon us. “Anything is possible” is unfolding daily upon the world stage.

Why am I here too? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Why am I here too?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

If you are alive today, in human form, you are indeed a part of this sweeping energy of change. What a magnificent time to be here! I suggest, to make the most of the opportunity, everyone of us address the question: Why am I personally here upon this earth at this time of unprecedented change?

The answer to this question lies in where we put our energy, attention, and deepest longing. I stress deepest longing because planet Earth is the playing field of attachment. Robert Monroe went so far as to call Earth the “planet of addiction.”

Attachment and addiction run hand in hand. If you are on this planet you had to emotionally attach. You are seeking something. Until you run the course of that desire, you will not be ready to move on. That is a pretty accurate description of addiction: running the course with an attachment until you’ve learned what you need to learn, or are completely fulfilled and bored, ready to release and move on to new adventure.

As I see it, the planet we are alive on is in a major phase of restructuring. Very clearly, human attachments or addictions have resulted in such an unsustainable environment that the Earth is being challenged in its ability to sustain life altogether. Clearly, the overload of human desire, with its myriad of attachments, has come to a point of total saturation.

The restructuring I speak of is an evolutionary advance that refines our relation to attachments. We must advance from ego want to Self need. Self here is defined as the greater whole of what we are versus the narrow, isolated ego that puts its wants and desires over that of the greater Self, within and without.

If we inventory our deepest driving desires, we might discover them to be issuing from ego’s desire for comfort, security, and attention of the kind that ego calls love. Ego is desperate to achieve its aims because ego, devoid of a connection to its greater self, knows only getting its needs met in the immediacy of this life—and it’s desperate to do so!

Resolution may lie in Investigating life and the self on the deepest level... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Resolution may lie in Investigating life and the self on the deepest level…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

With the ego in a leadership role of decision making, this can lead to many repetitive, poor decisions for the personality and the planet. Only in turning inward and discovering the greater Self, and acquiescing to its guidance and true needs, can we advance individually and evolutionarily as a species.

Ego on its own is addicted to the pursuit of its attachments, come what may! Ego serving the heart-centered true needs of the Self brings the personality and world itself into interconnected balance.

We are all here to advance beyond our attachments/addictions, to a greater Self and a greater world that drops its illusions and restores balance. That is the contribution we are all afforded in this time of great change and great advance.

May we all advance together,
Chuck

Additional reading: Here is another posting with the same title, channeled back in September 2007 that offers guidance in the process that Chuck writes about in his blogpost today: #153 Why Am I Here