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Chuck’s Place: How To Be Empowered Now

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Begin the empowerment process within…
-Artwork © 2025 Jan Ketchel

The ancient Hermetic principle, as within, so without, is the formula to access the power of the subconscious mind. The thoughts, feelings, beliefs and psychological complexes we house and incubate, through our mental preoccupation, become our as within. The subconscious mind is the creative matrix that then molds and materializes this inner state into the so without of our physical lives.

Could it be that simple? Yes! The utter simplicity of this powerful ancient formula is largely responsible for its underutilization, at least with conscious awareness and intent.  The subconscious mind has actually been running the show for all of life on earth, since its inception, under the direction of the instincts and archetypes of the collective unconscious.

It took the evolutionary advance of the birth of ego consciousness for humanity to become willfully capable of overriding instinct, thereby becoming empowered to take charge of its own destiny. With this advance, humans accessed their potential to direct the subconscious mind. The old powerhouses of instinct and archetype still exert a mighty influence upon the subconscious mind, but the ego can intentionally override these laws, even if it’s not in its best interest.

The subconscious mind engages that which most impresses it. To impress the subconscious mind, the conscious mind must truly believe in the power of the subconscious mind to manifest its suggestions. Thus, the subconscious must be approached with firm confidence.

Without this level of conviction, the ego’s desires are too watered down, mixed with too many thoughts and feelings that weaken its attractive power. When this happens, the subconscious becomes far more attracted to select the established, habitual patterns it keeps in storage, as opposed to going with a novel new suggestion that may, as of yet, lack the potency of the old.

For centuries, this latent ability to direct the subconscious mind through conscious intent has remained largely hidden from the masses of humanity. Arguably, the power of the subconscious mind in the hands of an immature or unscrupulous person could spell catastrophe for that individual, as well as the world at large.

Religious institutions have barred their flock from owning this divine power by socializing their congregants to live and judge themselves by strict moral dogma, with a stern warning to remain obedient to divine law rather than thinking independently for themselves.

All religious traditions place a premium on modesty, with folk traditions instructing one to knock on wood to placate the evil eye, or ken ayn hora, the wrath of an Almighty toward one who assumes Its power.  But what if we are actually the arm of that power, living and expanding the full experience of all that is?

Economic and political powers scooped up the discoveries of modern psychological science and autosuggestion to control people’s beliefs and behaviors through the advertising industry. This major outer influencer has largely taken over the direction of modern life, as its suggestions are internalized as one’s own, becoming the stuff of one’s incessant internal dialogue, or default autosuggestions.

The current state of the human mind has also been dominated by rational thinking, which actually parted ways with spiritual traditions a long time ago and installed reason as its sole godhead, casting a huge shadow of doubt over supposed mystical powers.

Even the thought of truly being able to manifest one’s life through suggestion to the subconscious mind is largely doubted and dismissed by the vast majority of humanity. Such has been the hegemony of pure reason.

State of the art modern neuroscience informed treatment of mental illness, for all its contributions, has anchored the mind in the materialism of the brain and the central nervous system. Science dismisses the energetic world of the soul,  and with it the power of the subconscious mind to manifest dramatic change. “Just a placebo effect” is its assessment of that which it can’t materially pin down.

The current state of the world is the true backdrop for the coming of age of one’s latent power to intentionally and mindfully create both one’s inner and outer world. The mind’s domineering fixation upon rationality is rapidly devolving into a chaos of near collective madness, bringing sanity itself to the brink of dissolution.

Frightful as this existential reality is, it’s the price for the pushing upward of new life. The pushing up of new life from beneath the earth is driven by its yearning for the sun, but does require a powerful effort of the will to prevail. The sun is the light of consciousness.  If we employ our energy in the direction of higher consciousness, we can discover our power to create our personal and collective worlds. Create within, create without.

First, we must make the monumental effort to discover and befriend our psychological complexes. Carl Jung coined this term to represent clusters of emotionally charged ideas, feelings, and memories that can operate outside of conscious awareness and significantly impact a person’s behavior. When unresolved, these hidden complexes keep us stuck in the automatic repetition of our habitual thoughts, behaviors and beliefs.

To begin the process of resolution of these hidden complexes, ask, with passion, that your subconscious mind connect you to the guidance of your High Self. Ask it to lead you through a journey of self-discovery that uncovers fully the complexes you harbor.

Such a recapitulation journey reveals these hidden parts of the self and asks you to bring them into unity with the personality, through the total knowing and accepting of their existence and experiences. This inner discovery process follows its own unique yellow brick road, as every day a magical dream or synchronicity of some kind reaches out to your conscious awareness and asks for exploration.

We must trust the way of the subconscious mind as we are led through this journey. This unification, or individuation, of personality results ultimately in the conscious mind being able to make a decisive suggestion to the subconscious mind, freed of the sabotaging effect of old, hidden parts.

With this new unification of personality and conscious intent, the ego is freed to fully and passionately imagine its wildest fantasies fulfilled, often in movies it generates in the mind. The subconscious then utilizes the substance of the energetic, subtle dimension of life to create the prototype that will gather in energy and density as it moves the dream forward to full physical realization.

Thus, at the subtle dimension is a new substantial reality that invites us to be patient as the next stage is realized, and as we express gratitude to the infinite intelligence of the subconscious mind for the realization of our dream. Once we have envisioned it, that dream is already a reality at the subtle level. For this reason we may state its completion as fact, even before its full physical manifestation.

As often as is right, dream your dream. Feel the joy and gratitude of its completion. State, clearly, your intention, with unbending intent. Relax. It is done. This is how to be empowered now.

Go discover the magical gift waiting for you today!
Chuck 

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Human Complexity

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Working on unity…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Carl Jung defined a psychological complex as a ‘feeling toned idea’ that acts quite autonomously in the human psyche. When Jung was performing his word association tests he observed that certain words triggered delayed reaction times and emotional reactions in his experimental subjects. Something ‘else’ was interfering.

This led to his discovery that there are autonomously functioning parts of the psyche acting outside of consciousness. Jung called these influences ‘complexes’. Freud spent his entire career highlighting the Oedipal complex, which he considered the greatest unconscious influence upon the human psyche.

Today we have terms like alters, ego states, fragmented parts or archetypes to depict these autonomous influences upon consciousness. Robert Monroe took Western psychology a step further with his research into out-of-body (OBE) states, where consciousness discovers non-material parts of the self that regularly influence consciousness from subtler planes of existence.

Monroe’s discoveries concur with Hindu science with respect to the emotional/desire body as the first to be encountered in an OBE state. Many OBE explorers report an encounter with excess sexual desire in their early explorations. Monroe also discovered a preponderance of sexual preoccupation by many travelers who had left human form through physical death, as they remained fixated on sexual activity, though lacking a physical body.

Monroe’s discovery certainly lays credence to Freud’s emphasis upon the overarching significance of sexuality for human beings. Sex may be the major karmic issue that sends disembodied spirits back into human life. Monroe also reported encounters on the astral plane with the energy body of sleeping human beings, equally preoccupied with sex in their dream states.

Beyond sex are the many emotional attachments that humans, in their energy body OBE states, are found to be preoccupied with. Civilization, with its emphasis upon reason, uniformity and conformity, has suppressed and repressed the spontaneous living of impulse. What we previously considered as repressed and contained within the psyche in the physical body may be very actively living on the astral plane outside of human consciousness.

The current polarized attitudinal split in the human race might actually reflect this polarized split within the human psyche, manifesting as an outer collective opposition. If we distill this opposition, it could be reduced to, simply, reason vs impulse. Resolution of this opposition is fundamental to unified progress.

Shamans introduced the practice of recapitulation as one’s individual soul retrieval journey. If one can bring consciousness and reconciliation to all of one’s parts, one can achieve wholeness while in human form. To the extent that this remains incomplete will determine one’s karma. After all, how can one go forward as a fragmented soul. One must first discover and gather together all of one’s parts.

Elmer Green served as his wife Alyce’s shamanic guide in her journey through Alzheimer’s disease. Alyce had spent her entire adult life immersed in the highest of spiritual principles. As her energy body journeyed into the astral plane, as she went the course of Alzheimer’s, she encountered her shadow self, the repressed and unloved side of herself, for the first time.

Besides her memory loss, she became paranoid and rageful much of  the time. These experiences were largely driven by her encounters with her unknown self. With extreme patience, Elmer helped her to get grounded and reconcile with her fuller self. This enabled her to enter infinity at an advanced level, well beyond the shadow bardos, when she physically died in this world.

Jung’s choice of the word complex to denote autonomous parts of the psyche truly holds up. Humans are complex beings! The key challenge in human form is to resolve all of one’s complexes and become one’s true wholeness. With wholeness one’s energy is fully united, as everything becomes possible.

From complex to unity,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Meditation, Sensation, Intuition

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Meditation offers balance and detachment... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Meditation offers balance and detachment…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

We live in a time of information overload. We are saturated from without by a constant flood of communication, from the latest news of everyone’s experiences to world events and an environment rapidly and unpredictably changing. Inwardly, we are flooded with images, thoughts, feelings and sensations, all vying for our attention that they might share their own stories.

The challenge now is how to stay grounded and manage this high intensity flow of data while simultaneously figuring out what is real, meaningful, and deserving of our attention.

There is a growing consensus, from many fields, that the ancient meditation practices of the East provide a technique that enables us to manage this overwhelming flood of data that we perceive or generate in such a way that we are granted the freedom to decide where we will place our attention. The simple ability to notice a thought or news item but be able to then choose to bring our attention back to the present moment, to our breath without interruption or a further development of the thought, goes a long way toward calming our central nervous system and providing the grounding to navigate daily life.

Carl Jung long ago identified two psychological functions, intuition and sensation, that are relevant to deepening our ability to navigate the flood of stimulation we encounter from within and without each day. Simply put, intuition is a psychological function, a sixth sense, that perceives what might be behind a door we are about to open, for instance, or “sees” some event in the future. Sensation operates through the five physical senses; it perceives what’s “actually” here and now.

These two functions are extreme opposites; one focuses on concrete known reality, the other on a future reality, unknowable in concrete terms. Often our minds are inundated with thoughts, feelings or images that if left to run freely would generate a story we might then contend is real. Suddenly we imagine a look on someone’s face or a call not returned as a definite snub. We feel rejected. We become frightened, anxious, and worried and before we know it we are living out that drama as if it were real.

Meditation might aid us here to lift us from the intensity of this inner drama and ground us in the here and now through focus on our body and one of its physiological functions, breathing. Here meditation couples with the sensation function to ground the ego and enable it to take back its energy from the drama. Afterwards, once centered, the ego is in a position to determine whether the germ seed of the drama was an actual intuition—that is, an actual perception of a future reality for instance—or merely the spinning of an illusion by a thought or some other trickster character in the personality.

Sitting with sensation our minds eventually enter the beauty and calmness of pure intuition... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Sitting with sensation our minds eventually enter the beauty and calmness of pure intuition…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Intuitions generally occur spontaneously, presenting a definite picture, feeling, or knowing of something unseen. The experience might be compared to a flash of lightening. It’s powerful. Inner dramas, by contrast, though they might build in emotional intensity as the drama deepens in the mind, are more like soap operas spinning endless tales than sudden and powerful shocks of knowing. A grounded ego, detached from the drama, is in a good position to determine if it’s dealing with drama or intuition and can decide more clearly what to give attention to and what to discard.

Of course, even when dealing with a legitimate intuition there is still the possibility that a perceived future does not unfold along the lines intuited. Once again we do well to exercise the tool of mediation that helps us to stay grounded in the present moment, suspending judgment of what might happen as we watch life unfold as it will.

In developing a dedicated meditation practice we are provided with the grounding in sensation that enables us to delve into and explore the unseen without being captivated by phantom dramas that consume our vital energy and distract us from real life. Meditation provides the bridge to unite the seemingly irreconcilable opposites of sensation and intuition, allowing us to deepen our meaningful presence in life, in all its dimensions.

Sitting in calm sensation,
Chuck

Once again, I share a YouTube video of a very simple and easy Korean meditation method: Son Meditation.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Mythbusters—The Rites Of Spring

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We must all sit upon the immovable spot if we are to achieve new life... - Photo by Chuck Ketchel
We must all sit upon the immovable spot if we are to achieve new life…
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

An eager workshop attendee once asked the Nagual, Carlos Castaneda, “Should we recapitulate what’s happening right now?” Carlos hesitated, then said softly, “Not yet,” with no further explanation. I knew in that moment that Carlos was saying that the luster of the myth we were all participating in would fade once recapitulated. He wanted us to enjoy the energy we were in for just a while longer. Isn’t that what we all seek when we fall in love, to enjoy the energy of it just a little while longer?

The truth is that once we have sat upon the immovable spot, as we sit beneath the Bodhi tree of our recapitulation, the energy and allure of the old illusions are released from our newly enlightened selves. We are freed from the terror, longing, and both negative and positive beliefs of old energetic attachments. We are able to walk out of the myths that once governed our lives into whole new worlds of possibility, real worlds of possibility.

Carl Jung recognized that all lives embody a core myth. If we look around to the cast of characters we were born into and the formative events of our lives, we can begin to identify the myth we were born into. Perhaps it’s our karmic challenge to solve a problem that has held us in check for eons. How could it be possible to be freed to new life if we have not cracked the nut of an old problem—our mythical nemesis? There is no escape from an unsolved problem; we continue to meet it everywhere. If we are convinced that we are unlovable, no amount of attention will convince us otherwise. If we are to be loved, we must first free ourselves of our attachment to the myth of the ugly duckling.

This requires recapitulation. We must be able to be present to all the truths to free ourselves from the myth we have been captivated by. Those truths might include that the mythic giants who conceived of us in this life were, indeed, quite flawed mortals without a clue. We’re all equals now, outside the myth of familial promise in the nursery; equal beings who are going to die; equal beings trying to crack the mystery of our myths, seeking new—real—adult life.

The violent, unrefined destructive energies of new life are boiling beneath the surface of spring. Birth is an aggressive, violent process—let’s bust any romantic myth to the contrary right now. The energies of earth quake beneath the surface, the intensities of storm surround us. Right now, at spring’s awakening, we all sit upon the immovable spot.

There really is new life beneath the hardened surface! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
There really is new life beneath the hardened surface!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

If there is to be new life, the rigid ground of myths that no longer channel life must be cracked. New life promises Abundance, the 3 of Cups, the first Tarot card that I pulled on the first day of spring as I contemplated writing this blog. However, the rigid structures, the myths we have clung to, must be sacrificed, the Hanged Man, the second card I pulled. We must allow our ego attachments, the myths we cling to, to be busted by the living waters rushing beneath the surface. Like a crucified being, we must sit upon the immovable spot of recapitulation that will allow the truths to set us free to new life. To achieve this we must allow for clear and truthful communication, The Magus, the third card I pulled, the winged messenger of Mercury, to deliver the truth clearly, to allow the Rites of Spring to be performed, busting through the old myths, bringing new life in abundance.

Mythbusting,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Anxiety—The Curtain Call To Mythic Encounter

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What form does your mythic encounter take? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
What form does your mythic encounter take?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

I was energetically drawn to read Scott Stossel’s article, My Anxious, Twitchy, Phobic (Somehow Successful) Life, in the January/February issue of The Atlantic. Though totally appreciative of his full personal disclosure, I was disappointed in the outcome of his lifelong journey to lift this pervasive, crippling symptom from his life; his seemingly best cure—a combination of Xanax, Inderal, and either scotch or vodka—necessary prior to a speaking engagement in order to pull it off. It’s pretty clear that the subject of anxiety needs revisioning beyond the failed rational therapies of our time if we are to truly tackle this mythic giant.

Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell spent much of their lives demonstrating the relevance of myths to modern life. Carl Jung insisted that analsands discover the myth that governed their own lives that they might effectively find the path to their individuation. I propose that we treat anxiety as the curtain call to our personal myths, that is, that when anxiety calls, we treat ourselves to a mythic encounter, a mere mortal summoned to interact with the gods.

When anxiety calls we become helpless children, shuddering before a world of giants—adults—who have total power over our life and death. How will we fare in the encounter? Will we survive, be cared for, tossed aside, punished, welcomed, accepted? These are the fears and hopes we harbor in our smallness when we enter into our mythic encounters.

What will his/her mood be when he/she enters the room? I shudder.

Will my work be acceptable? I shudder.

Will I get promoted? I shudder.

Will I be expected to have sex? I shudder.

Will I be capable of having sex? I shudder.

Will the plane fall from the sky? I shudder.

Will I be able to perform? I shudder.

Will I lose it? I shudder.

Will I be attacked? I shudder.

Behind each of these anxious anticipations lies a mythic encounter, whether it be with a goddess, a good witch, a bad witch, an ogre, a wise god, or some other permutation of power that we feel inadequate in the face of. Our challenge, in this life, is to become the hero that takes the journey to secure our rightful place and find fulfillment. That journey, like all heros’ journeys, is filled with adventures into mythical realms; encounters with dragons, tricksters, witches and helpers that challenge and support our growing ability to hold our own as we follow the yellow brick road.

Anxiety is the necessary alarm that summons us to our challenge and ultimately asks us to turn off its shrill call. The tasks are formidable; all myths are epic and lifetime adventures. Sometimes the challenge is to unmask the larger-than-life wizard, like in Oz, to subdue a projection that generates anxiety. Sometimes the challenge is to marry into the gods, to experience the numinous and ecstatic without disintegration. Sometimes the challenge is to wrestle the giant to the ground, overcoming our fear that we are not enough, that we have no power. Turning off the anxiety alarm might also mean challenging ourselves to consciously learn to deeply relax and regulate the nervous system; the mythic encounter here being with the body itself.

Don't worry… be happy! - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Don’t worry… be happy!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

In revisioning our lives in this world as, ultimately, anxious encounters with the mythic realm, we offer ourselves the opportunity to hone our beings to continue as mythical, magical beings in infinity beyond the human form. Thank you anxiety for waking us to our magical selves! May we all be heroes that accept where we are, our starting points of fear and trembling pointing out our immediate challenges.

Heroes come in all forms and each must face their own unique challenges. If we are here in this world, we are already heroes, even if reluctantly so. We all made it through the dark canal, cut the cord, and became adventurers in a new world. Don’t stop now!

On the mythic adventure,
Chuck