Tag Archives: Carlos Castaneda

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Discovering Intent

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Long ago, I was drawn to the adventures, practices and cognitive world of the Seers of Ancient Mexico. The energetic wave of that once closed world was reformatting to be of relevance to a new era as ushered in by the published works of Carlos Castaneda in the 1960s. The value of the tools from that ancient world are critical as we navigate our now rapidly changing world.

I have little use for words such as trust or belief unless they are based upon personal experience that supports them. At heart, I am a scientist. I cannot know something unless I know it through actual experience. Nonetheless, as Carlos Castaneda suggested in his thirtieth anniversary commentary in The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, our intellectual allegiance—what I would call resonance—sets off powerful undercurrents that effect a transformation in our perception and experience of life.

In simpler terms, concepts, even words themselves, can energetically transform us, but we must discover this for ourselves. What generally inhibits this transforming experience is the allegiances we bear based on our socialization.

If our socialization tells us that it is irrational to believe that stating our intent will lead to a major change, we simply won’t do it. In fact, we might instead spend our energy vigorously defending the absurdity of such a practice. From my own experience, however, I know that stating an intent is the most powerful tool of change.

When someone approaches me, in my formal role as an agent of change, we explore their intent to heal or change. I explain that that intent will manifest. It is not my intuitive powers that will guide the journey; my role is to track the energy of that intent. Intent is the guide.

Often my initial task is to ask my client to suspend judgement and experiment with this working hypothesis: everything they need they have within. Intent is now steering the process. Let’s gather the data and, like true scientists, see what happens.

The data comes in the form of synchronicities, dreams, encounters of everyday life, intuitions, thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, long forgotten experiences, etc. Everything is potentially meaningful; all is gathered and examined.

What we discover, over and over, is that intent is indeed an intelligent force that leads to its fulfillment. We cannot predetermine the course that journey will take; our challenge is to track it and stay on its unfolding trail unencumbered by doubt and worry.

Intent has proven to be the most valuable tool to effect deep healing and transformation. So simple, so accessible, but requiring of a truly scientific attitude of experimentation to discover: INTENT!

Calling intent,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Present Without Props

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The female cohorts of Carlos Castaneda would laugh mysteriously as they described Carlos’s romance with knowledge. He would lie down and cover his body with books, literally absorbing knowledge through their many points of contact with his body. Carlos had released the prop that reading must happen through the eyes only; he suspended judgment and opened to new channels of learning within himself.

Oftentimes, during recapitulation, people begin to experience all kinds of physical sensations at different places inside and on the outside of their bodies. These sensations can be so unexpected and powerful that many times medical consultation is sought. Once cleared of medical etiology another possibility may be considered. Perhaps the sensation is an active communication of knowledge from some other point on the body self. Perhaps the recapitulation has opened the channels to knowledge that may have been stored by the body self some fifty years ago. Perhaps the body self is inviting us into the full knowledge of the experiences of our life lived through direct sensorial experience.

This is very often the case in recapitulation; a united effort by the body self to fill in the blanks in our memory of life already lived. This experience of recapitulation, whether intentionally sought or unintentionally triggered, asks us to drop the prop of our rationality that tells us that the body neither stores memory nor communicates independently of the mind.

How terrifying it can be to stay fully present and absorb this body of knowledge! The body generally “speaks” through direct sensorial experience that can range from pleasure to overwhelming pain. Often, if we allow ourselves to take the sensation journey with our body, channels may open to smells, temperature, and sounds, as well as triggering images, scenes, and eventually full movies of forgotten experience. The overall experience can range from subtle to riveting—the roller coaster of a lifetime.

Intimacy, in relationship, might also be defined as staying present without the props. How deeply might we allow ourselves to stare into each other’s eyes? How accepting might we be of sitting with each other, fully present, in utter silence? How long before the mind provides a thought to be discussed, a prop of distraction to create conversation, abstraction in place of presence? Can we not do the routines that have formed the crust and definition of our relationship—the props of habit—and open ourselves to new truths of who we are or who our partner is?

Finally, can we be fully present with ourselves, occupying the seat of the observer? Can we let go of the props of music or voice at the ear, computer or TV in the eye, food or drink in the mouth, book or cell phone in the hand?

Can we simply be present without judgment, unattached to thought, experiencing sensation and energy as it flows in the body? Can we notice the sound and vibration of energy? Can we allow it to deepen? Can we journey with it, uninterrupted by props?

Let’s see what happens!
Chuck

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Dreaming Intent

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To follow up on Jeanne’s message of the other day, Navigating the Mystical, I decided to practice intent last night. Right before falling asleep, when I was already drowsy, I set this intent: I intend to know the moment I am falling asleep and remain aware of dropping into a dream. I want to know the moment this is happening and retain the experience. Immediately, I closed my eyes and was aware of literally feeling like I was dropping into a dream.

This is what I experienced: I felt as if I were more than one being or awareness. I was the dreamer in the dream and a dreaming observer as well. I saw my own hand reach out from the left, palm open and facing upward. “Oh look, there’s my hand,” my dreaming self thought. Then almost immediately another hand appeared on the right holding a red flower in its palm, as if showing it to me or offering it to me. I felt I should look at it closely. My dream observer, aware of also being the owner of the hand said, “Oh, look at that, two hands, and look at that beautiful flower.” At the same time, my awareness as the dreamer in the dream concentrated on looking closely at the flower. It was as if I were looking through a microscope at this close up scene of the two hands, and I was both inside the scene with awareness and I was also the outer observer looking through the microscope. I woke up immediately and thought: “It worked! My intent worked!”

Enthused by this experience I decided to try again. This time, I set a new intent, which was: I intend to see everything in my dream with crystal clarity. Again I felt myself dropping into dreamland. This time I landed in a small rowboat. I appeared to be on an arctic lake formed by a melting glacier. It reminded me of hiking up Svart Isen, a huge glacier in Norway that I once tramped up and had a most amazing experience on, as I watched and heard the rumblings and shiftings of this massive ice flow, its colors almost Caribbean blues, a contrast that, at the time, I found remarkable. There on top of the northern world were the same intense blues of the waters of the Caribbean Sea; fascinating.

Anyway, in my dream, I am in this tiny boat floating without oars into the center of this huge glacier. Everything is crystal clear! The word “Crystalline” was repeating throughout the dream experience, in a sort of voiceover, though I knew it was my own voice. I floated further into the glacier and was soon surrounded on all sides by this crystalline world of ice. It was not blue as in my experience in real life, but absolutely “crystal clear,” just as I had set in my intent.

Again, I woke up out of this experience quite fascinated by the literal quality of my dreaming self and the response of the universe, as it so nicely allowed me to have these experiences. This reminded me of what Jeanne had said in the message on Monday, that you must remain aware of how your intentions or requests are answered, that they may not be as clear or straightforward as you desire. However, I thought my dream experience was humorously playing right into my intent to have an experience of crystal clarity. It literally gave me an experience of just that!

I find this process fascinating, the way the psyche and the universe, the dreaming body and awareness, do work hand in hand. I got what I asked for! In this case, I received several gifts: proof that intent does indeed work because I fell into a dream, I retained the dream experience, and I got crystal clarity, all the things I desired. And, in addition, my intent from the first experience “to remember” carried over into the second experience, thus showing that intent, once set, is planted for future use.

Perhaps my recitations on these experiences may add to your own personal incentive to try dreaming intent or any other intent. As subtle as these experiences may seem, they were in fact just what I asked for and I felt quite satisfied with the night’s work. The rest of the dream night proceeded from there. As I fell back to sleep the third time, I simply set my intent to keep going along the same lines. As I went deeper into sleep and dreaming, the word “crystalline” kept popping up, my awareness reminding me to look closely, very clearly at my dream world, which I was aware of doing.

See if this conversation that Carlos Castaneda had with don Juan, from pages 22 and 23 in The Art of Dreaming makes any sense in how dreaming intent works:

Don Juan explained that there are entrances and exits in the energy flow of the universe and that, in the specific case of dreaming, there are seven entrances, experienced as obstacles, which sorcerers call the seven gates of dreaming.

“The first gate is a threshold we must cross by becoming aware of a particular sensation before deep sleep,” he said. “A sensation which is like a pleasant heaviness that doesn’t let us open our eyes. We reach that gate the instant we become aware that we’re falling asleep, suspended in darkness and heaviness.”

“How do I become aware that I am falling asleep? Are there any steps to follow?”

“No. There are no steps to follow. One just intends to become aware of falling asleep.”

“But how does one intend to become aware of it?”

“Intent or intending is something very difficult to talk about. I or anyone else would sound idiotic trying to explain it. Bear that in mind when you hear what I have to say next: sorcerers intend anything they set themselves to intend, simply by intending it.”

“That doesn’t mean anything, don Juan.”

“Pay close attention. Someday it’ll be your turn to explain. The statement seems nonsensical because you are not putting it in the proper context. Like any rational man, you think that understanding is exclusively the realm of our reason, of our mind.”

“For sorcerers, because the statement I made pertains to intent and intending, understanding it pertains to the realm of energy. Sorcerers believe that if one would intend that statement for the energy body, the energy body would understand it in terms entirely different from those of the mind. The trick is to reach the energy body. For that you need energy.”

Intend by intending? Find the energy body? Does it all sound too idiotic, as don Juan suggests? So what, just try it, set your dreaming intent and see what happens. These are the means to beginning a process of navigating the mystical, as Jeanne suggested. It works. Good luck and good dreaming!

If you wish, feel free to share or comment in the Post Comment section below.

Thanks for reading! Sending you all love and good wishes,
Jan

Jan's Blog

A Day in a Life: Experience as a Path

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As I write today, we are again immersed in frozen winter weather in the Northeast, a time that offers a most singular experience, forcing us to curtail our activities and deal with its impact, which can suddenly and unrelentingly take over, causing devastation and undesirable change. It is at times like these that I realize how insignificant we are in the path of nature.

I find myself of no importance as I face the snow and ice, the downed limbs and power lines, and as I battle to clear our driveway, scrape the ice off our cars, and keep our house warm. We don’t really matter to nature, and yet we are part of it. This is, as I see it, the same message from the shaman’s world, the world of the seers that asks us to accept our insignificance, to lose our self-importance, yet to utilize and value our experiences. How do we reconcile that dilemma, the idea that we are insignificant with the idea that we are here in our lives to have incredible experiences? How do we make sense of this conundrum?

For the past ten years I have been immersing myself in the shaman’s world; specifically, but not limited to, the world of the seers of ancient Mexico as described by Carlos Castaneda. I came into the seer’s world by intent, I believe, intent that I set long before I was even conscious, nature at its most basic. But my life’s challenge was to gain enough awareness, by becoming fully present in this world, by becoming increasingly open to seeing that everything I experience in this life may not be what I, at first, think or perceive.

My true introduction into the seer’s world really began when I first met Chuck Ketchel, though, as I have mentioned in previous blogs, I had read and felt an intense resonance with the early books of Castaneda when I was in my early twenties. It was not until I was ready, however, that the seers’ world really opened up for me, or perhaps that I opened up to it.

In the beginning, I admit, I was somewhat skeptical about the seer’s world, though never reluctant to explore its meaning or the possibilities it offered. I was ready and I met the right person to introduce me to a way of viewing life and life’s experiences from another perspective. In learning about this world of the seers, I learned that the experiences I had previously had were the necessary foundations for taking a journey of intelligent and complicated growth. My continued experiences are equally necessary, if I am to lose my self-importance and face my own insignificance, as well as my death.

Of course, this is a very personally resonant journey that I am on, and I know that not everyone will find what they seek in the seer’s world. There are many other paths that run parallel to this experiential world of the seers and I have a strong connection to some of them, having also been deeply immersed in yoga and meditation, and having had paranormal and psychic experiences my entire life. But even those paths and strange experiences became clearer, began to make greater sense to me, as I continued my voyage into the world of the seers of ancient Mexico, for I found that the seers offered explanations for experiences and encounters that I could not find explanations for anywhere else. Other paths and modalities did not offer the fuller picture that I have felt so resonantly in the seer’s world, often dismissing or avoiding the deeper healing that I have gone through as I engaged in the processes of recapitulation. The seer’s world gave me a new understanding of life from the experiential perspective.

I was never a religious person, but I have always been a spiritual person. Although raised a Catholic, taught by nuns, I knew at an early age that there was no resonance in the rhetoric and teachings of the catechism or the dictates of that paternal organization. Even at the age of seven I knew I was a doubter, that I could neither uphold nor fit into the Catholic mold. Perhaps with that knowing I unconsciously set the intent for future experiences that went far beyond the world of parochial education and expectations.

I have learned more fully, especially over the past ten years, that our singular journeys hold all we need to evolve, in our experiences. Our experiences are showing us what we need to learn, as they provide us with exactly the challenges that will move us beyond our present incarnation. In the seer’s world, I have found indescribable release from the dictates of a world that never quite made sense to me.

I have also found that my years of discipline in yoga and meditation serve me well in the seer’s world, and are in fact deeply utilized in that world—though different terms are used, the principles and practices are the same. The Buddhist principles of the middle way, of detachment, and gaining enlightenment are also deeply entrenched in the seer’s world. In the seer’s world all of these things, and many more that I may not even be aware of, are given credence and value. Everything is given a place in the seer’s world, without judgment, yet at the same time we are constantly presented with not attaching to any of them. The seers expect us to fully live our lives, embrace our experiences, and yet never forget that we are going to move beyond this world.

As I look out the window now and see the cold white snow and ice, I understand this concept, this dilemma more clearly. For what the seers present to us is the truth of nature—it is what it is—and we can do nothing about it, except accept that we are here and be impeccable in how we choose to live in this world, how we choose to face oncoming time, winter included, death included, as well as all the experiences that nature affords us. For yes, we are beings who are going to die, but in the meantime we are forces of nature that cannot do otherwise than live in this world. And yes, I have more snow and ice to shovel!

If we choose a path of experience, perhaps we will not only advance ourselves, but offer a new kind of challenge to those around us: to advance and evolve as well.

If you wish, feel free to share or comment in the Post Comment section below.

Sending you all love and good wishes,
Jan

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Magical Books

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Some books simply are magical. Every time I pick up any book of Carlos Castaneda’s—books I have read dozens of times over the past forty years—I encounter new knowledge. These books are alive with an energy that takes me deeper in my journey of awareness. They inevitably lead me into heightened awareness where my clarity of knowing is unparalleled. I experience directly the intent of the seers of ancient Mexico. Carlos channeled that intent in those living books by completely removing his self-importance from their pages. He reserves his words for precise descriptions of his experiences in the seer’s world.

Recently, while rummaging through the books at the local recycling center, I came upon the big book, AA’s “bible.” Though I’ve read countless works on recovery, I never actually read this book. This book is also a living book, a magical book. Unpretentious, blue, with no outer appeal, in fact, rather anonymous looking, it nonetheless called out to me.

As I began to read through its pages, I recognized the evolutionary intent it channels. AA is the most successful mass movement for evolutionary change on earth. The guidelines of that intent are clearly spelled out in shamanic terms. For change to happen one must beckon a power beyond the ego. The ego must then open to a shamanic journey with that power to experience genuine transformation. In preparation for that journey the guidance requires a complete loss of self-importance, in fact, in AA everyone remains on a first name basis only. No one is more important than the other—there is no hierarchy. No profit is to be made from the program and no one is rejected; all are equal. (I think Senator McCarthy was barking up the wrong tree when he was seeking out the true communists in America in the nineteen-fifties!)

Furthermore, the growth of AA was predicated on the energetic law of attraction, clearly spelled out in the book, attraction versus promotion. The guidance also strongly recommends one’s individual encounter with the truth in the form of a moral inventory and making of amends. This is a version of recapitulation that enables the seeker to put down old burdens, erase the constraints of personal history, preparing the ground for freedom and transformation.

In describing the magical origins of AA, the book chronicles the role of C. G. Jung. After failing to cure one of AA’s founders, the dejected patient pressed Jung for any glimmer of hope for what to do next to heal. Jung, offering little hope to this advanced alcoholic patient and without any further guidance, suggested he might experience a transformation through a spiritual experience. “Here and there, once in a while, alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences,” Jung told him. (p. 27 in Alcoholics Anonymous Third Edition.) He did indeed go out and have a spiritual experience that channeled the path to AA, and the rest is history, as chronicled in the big book, a living viable path for transformation.

Jung himself, the son of generations of protestant ministers, was faced with the personal experience that dogma and belief could not serve the needs of his soul. As Aniela Jaffé writes in C. G. Jung Word and Image: “In his eyes, the ability to believe was a gift of grace, one which he (Jung) and many others no longer shared. That loss justified the search for new approaches to the numinous.” This was the impetus behind Jung’s suggestion to his alcoholic patient to go out and seek a spiritual experience.

Jung himself recorded his own spiritual journey in The Red Book, another magical book. In this book Jung chronicles his personal confrontation with powers greater than himself, a series of numinous experiences that ultimately paved its own path to wholeness in the form of analytical psychology. This book, like other magical books, is bereft of self-importance and hints at a means for each of us to discover our own individuation.

The common thread running through the magical books of Carlos Castaneda, AA, and C. G. Jung is that they all channel the energy of transformation and evolutionary intent, offering access to a personal spiritual transformative experience. Whether the journey happens in the shaman’s world, supported by a nagual, or in psychotherapy under the guidance of a therapist, or in “the rooms” supported by the AA community, it is only a personal experience that will lead to genuine transformation and change.

These magical books speak to our time, where the grace of dogma and belief can no longer serve the spiritual evolutionary needs of a planet in crisis, in dire need of transformation. However, to go beyond dogma and belief and truly achieve transformation each one of us must individually take the journey, and see what happens!

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck