Tag Archives: Carlos Castaneda

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Chuck’s Place: Finding The True Heart

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Don Juan’s fundamental guidance to Carlos Castaneda was to choose a path with heart, for “a path with heart is easy—it does not make a warrior work at liking it; it makes for a joyful journey; as long as a man [or woman] follows it, he [she] is one with it.” *

We all have a two-part heart... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
We all have a two-part heart…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Here don Juan speaks to what Sri Aurobindo called being in alignment with the Divine Spark, the Psychic Being hidden in the cave at the center of the heart chakra. To realize the truth of this Divine Spark as one’s path in this life is to truly find and traverse one’s path with heart. And yet, the heart is of two parts, its emotional side offering “an obscure and often uncertain and misleading power,” as Aurobindo states, as well as behind that emotional heart, “a profounder mystic light which, if not what we call intuition…has yet a direct touch upon Truth and is nearer the Divine that the human intellect in its pride of knowledge.” ** This second, mystical heart, is the heart that is hidden in the cave at the center of the heart chakra, this is the true heart that seeks and recognizes a path with heart.

On a physical level the heart is the center of life and vitality in the body. There is no physical life without a heartbeat. The movement of the heart distributes energy to every cell of the body to enable all cells to act. This action extends to emotional life, where feelings spur human action and interaction.

Aurobindo states: “…there is in front in men a heart of vital emotion similar to the animal’s, if more variously developed; its emotions are governed by egoistic passion, blind instinctive affections and all the play of the life-impulses with their imperfections, perversions, often sordid degradations,—heart besieged and given over to the lusts, desires, wraths, intense or fierce demands or little greeds and mean pettinesses of an obscure and fallen life-force and debased by its slavery to any and every impulse.” **

Here Aurobindo refers to the heart’s action capacity as being under the dominance of the three lower chakras, animal instincts ruled by the archetypal governances or gods of the planetary being at its purely survival mode, as well as a mixture of ego-willfulness supplanting nature’s imperative to its own self-serving ends. (See last week’s blogpost for further explanation: Beyond Archetypal Bondage)

Here arises confusion at the heart center, for though the emotional heart dominates through much of life this irrational emotive center is incapable of guiding the true needs of the Self, the higher being that we all are. This part of the heart chakra, with all its powerful emotionality, provides the justification for the rise to order and reason of the rational mind, as it insists on its superiority and hegemony over the vagaries of the feeling heart.

Rationality is like a predator, constantly swooping in to reassert its presence... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Rationality is like a predator, constantly swooping in to reassert its presence…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Aurobindo comments: “This mixture of the emotive heart and the sensational hungering vital creates in man a false soul of desire; it is this that is the crude and dangerous element which the reason rightly distrusts and feels a need to control, even though the actual control or rather coercion it succeeds in establishing over our raw and insistent vital nature remains always very uncertain and deceptive.” ***

Unfortunately, attempts at rational control over emotive behavior, or cognitive behavioral therapy, rarely quell the base impulses raging in the heart. More often than not they are sentenced to the prison of the shadow unconscious where they lie in wait, scheming their next disruptive moves. The apparent calm after the storm is generally short-lived.

How many times couples find themselves immediately reignited in a conflict, after a voluntary break for calming and cooling, reflects the thin veil of control reason holds over the fiery energy of an ignited heart.

Though reason might offer a pause, it cannot settle matters of the true heart. For don Juan, reason would be a false path, not the path that could be guided by spirit. How then does one go about achieving the quiet heart, of locating “the true invisible heart hidden in the luminous cave” *** of the heart center, and truly find a path with heart.

Tibetan Buddhism has developed the practice of Tonglen breathing where the fire of emotion is allowed to burn off and transform in the heart center, through breathing in the fire that wants to attack or attach outwardly and breathing out a cooler breath of compassion. This is an alchemical process of transforming emotional heat into the steady flame of cool luminosity utilizing the heart chamber as the retort, or flask, to burn off the impurities of the lower chakras to arrive at truth and compassion. Once we find our way to true compassion, compassion that is not tainted with sympathy, empathy, or guilt, we’ve entered the cave of objective truth where the cool Divine Spark glows in all its luminosity.

Behind the known heart lies the cave of the luminous heart... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Behind the known heart lies the cave of the luminous heart…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The I Ching in the hexagram Ken, the Mountain, hints at the practice of yoga as a method to still the restlessness of the heart, another alchemical process. Regardless of methodology, the essence of an alchemical practice is to contain the energy of the lower chakras that would drive the heart to outbursts of emotive activity. Through containment of this emotional energy a transformation takes place whereby the cave of the hidden mystical heart appears. Then the Psychic Being, the true higher Self, is available to come forth and take the reins in right action.

In opening access to the true heart chakra where the Psychic Being resides, that inmost link to Divine Soul, only truth and compassion flow. As Aurobindo states: “It is as this psychic being in him grows and the movements of the heart reflect its divinations and impulsions that man becomes more and more aware of his soul, ceases to be a superior animal, and, awakening to glimpses of the godhead within him, admits more and more its intimations of a deeper life and consciousness and an impulse towards things divine.” ****

The path to unveil the hidden heart is truly the path with heart.

With compassion,
Chuck

References:
* The Wheel of Time, Castaneda, p. 19
** The Psychic Being, Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, p 26
*** The Psychic Being, Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, p 27
**** The Psychic Being, Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, p 27-28

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The End Of An Era

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The shadow of death is always right behind us... - Photo by Chuck Ketchel
The shadow of death is always right behind us…
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

I most humbly and with deep gratitude borrow the title for this blog post—The End of an Era—from a section heading in Carlos Castaneda’s final work, The Active Side of Infinity. As I look about me and see the signs of endings everywhere the phrase “end of the story” comes to mind, but I refuse it. It’s not the end of our story; it’s the end of an era.

I have just finished reading to Jan the chapter entitled Death as an Advisor in Castaneda’s early work Journey to Ixtlan. As I look over my left shoulder—where death, our faithful companion sits perched about an arm’s length away—I don’t feel the chill up my spine, the sign death delivers to show us our time is up. The sign is neither there for myself nor the world, and so our story continues.

Nonetheless, death delivers many signs on the world stage, countless atrocities, beheadings and the like. With these signs death advises us to awaken from the daily trance we live in, generated by our complacent minds—the foreign installation the Shamans of Ancient Mexico taught us about—our true antagonist in this chapter of our world’s story.

The storyline of that foreign installation—our mind—is to focus on the pettiness of self-importance and greed, the matrix that keeps us distracted from the real precipice we are perched upon, our survival dangling in delicate balance.

Death broadcasts its message in dramatic voice. Yes, we are in the throes of transformation, one era melding into another. Death advises that we cut through to the bone of the illusions we have clung to, the cornerstone of the era we are leaving. That era has been dominated by the mind’s attachment to greed in all its myriad forms. Greed is a virus unsustainable in the New Era. Our next chapter is immune to the virus of greed.

I do not fault greed, the product of what don Juan called the Flyer’s mind, another term for the foreign installation that challenges us and has held us so tightly in its grasp. Don Juan states:

“We are energetic probes created by the universe…and it’s because we are possessors of energy that has awareness that we are the means by which the universe becomes aware of itself. The flyers are the implacable challengers…They are the means by which the universe tests us.” *

Here don Juan identifies our ultimate reason for being in this world. Through our journeys in this life we become the apparatuses of consciousness that enlighten our World Soul. We are the active side of infinity. The flyers, or foreign installation, that have taken root in our minds are the agents of greed. The dominance of greed has let us sit back in the Matrix** and pretend all is well. Death, our faithful advisor, shows us that the gig is up; wake up!

Like the snow squalls, a New Era too will blow in... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Like the snow squalls,
a New Era too will blow in…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

The flyers, monstrous as they may be, are the necessary antagonists that force us to shine a brighter and brighter light on the truth. This is how the universe challenges us to become aware of itself: The light of consciousness shines through all the veils of illusion to arrive at what really is. Evil—those flyers, the foreign installation that controls our mind—is actually challenging us to wake up, to burn through the illusions and deepen our alignment with the truth.

This is the basis of our New Era, a world that aligns itself with right action, a world that corrects its course and allows Earth’s story to continue in new balance. Of course, this New Era will have its own new antagonists to contend with. And someday this New Era will also end. But the truth is that this Earth story is such a good one that it’s just not allowed to end yet, though someday it will.

All things have their era and then they eventually end because that is the imperative of consciousness, to grow and adventure in this, the ever-deepening, active side of infinity.

World without end, Amen,
Chuck

*Quote from: The Active Side of Infinity, p. 229

** Reference is made to the movie, The Matrix.

We also note the synchronicity of this day: today is Ash Wednesday, a New Moon phase, and the eve of the Chinese New Year, all endings, and beginnings of new eras.

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Fallen Angels Or Magical Beings?

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The other morning, as I prepared for work, my mind was preoccupied with Jung’s “Late Thoughts,” a chapter in his autobiography that spoke of his final commentary on a world he was soon to leave. Jung lamented that the world lacked a living religious mythology that had kept pace with, and could serve as a guide to the modern world. His major concern was the question of evil for the modern world, which is still cast as the fallen angel, separate and distinct from God. How is mankind to reconcile the wholeness of its nature if God is only light, and darkness a fallen angel who failed to remain in the goodness of the light. That fallen angel resides in all mankind in the dark side of its nature?

Eventually the grackle turned over and sat up, still quite dazed... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Eventually the grackle turned over and sat up, still quite dazed…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

At the exact moment of this thought, I was stunned by a loud THUD at the glass door to our deck. I ran to the door to find a large black grackle lying on its back, its wings flailing frantically, its heart beating wildly. It was clearly in shock and my heart sank at the sight of its helplessness and its dubious prognosis.

I knew better than to open the door and attempt to assist. The fatal outcome of the wounded animals I had rescued in my childhood came to mind. Better to give this bird the sanctuary of its own inner resources than to shock it further with outside intervention, however well-meaning.

I quietly walked away, grappling with my own sadness and yet hopeful that this fallen angel might resume its journey. A half hour later, I returned to discover that the grackle’s wings were completely still, its heartbeat barely discernible. The prognosis appeared fatal, though I still held out hope.

Before I left the house, I checked one more time and was excited to discover that the bird had turned over and was sitting calmly in its place. The next question was: Will it actually be able to fly, or does it have a broken wing? An hour later, Jan was able to report that the grackle had successfully regained its poise, spread its wings, and lifted off the deck into a nearby tree.

I am left with the synchronicity of Jung’s lament that religious mythology has not progressed beyond earth and humankind needing redemption and the crash of the black grackle into the glass. Perhaps this bird’s process was the answer to a new mythology, more guiding and pertinent to our modern sensibility and dire predicament.

The first picture that popped into my mind was the image on the cover of Carlos Castaneda’s first book, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, a black crow perched in the desert. My bird was a grackle, often associated with the crow but not actually of its family. Nonetheless, the association leads me to the mythology of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico.

Those shamans see human beings as magical beings. What an awesome description; human beings are inherently magical! This is a far cry from beings fallen from God, offspring of Satan and earth. This is a description that transcends good and evil, and morality itself. This designation is intrinsically, and wholeheartedly, simply magical!

Preparing to take off... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Preparing to take off…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Indeed, the Shamans of Ancient Mexico see the world we live in as a consensus reality, a fixation of our vast potential, an interruption in our magical flight. We are like the bird that crashed into the glass; we are all lying helpless on the deck of this world, our magical nature ground to a halt.

Like the grackle that smacked into the glass those shamans see the central grounding position of our human fixation as the collision of our magical nature with self-reflection. Self-reflection is the overriding obsession currently mirrored in our attachment to the “likes” of social media. Our species is obsessed with its goodness, badness, value, possessions, and self-preservation, which color our ability to go beyond the self and see the true needs in the world around us.

This obsession with me and mine is the modus operandi behind greed, wars, and the destruction of the planet. Nonetheless, the shamans suspend judgment and instead totally appreciate the utter magic of our ability to create this world, regardless of its instability. Like modern physicists, they understand the world of everyday reality as but one of many possible interpretations of energy. At the same time, they cannot help but marvel at how magical a species we really are, powerful enough to create the consensus reality we all live in every day of our lives. Yet those shamans know that, like my bird who had to find its way back to its wings, human beings have all they need within themselves to restore their connection to their magic.

The world is now like my flailing grackle, charged to recalibrate itself beyond its encounter with self-reflection. That bird needed no outside help, no Godly redeemer to restore it to balance. We have everything we need too. We are, after all, magical.

The world wobbles out of control because it must find its way back to the magic, beyond its destructive hold on self-importance over the greater needs of life. That particular fixation has run its full course and is no longer sustainable. A new world that explores its interdependent wholeness is in formation. And that grackle did rebalance and lift off to a new adventure, and so will we.

Off on a new adventure... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Off on a new adventure…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

I distinctly recall Carlos Castaneda, at a tensegrity workshop, turning his back to us as he performed a deep shoulder roll, including his full shoulder blade, telling us to “free your wings.” Yes, in the eyes of those shamans we are magical beings whose wings have been clipped, but needn’t be if we are prepared to do a deep recapitulation and set ourselves free.

I know that Carlos would say that we have two interpretations to choose from: We are the offspring of God’s fallen angels who need redemption from our inability to transcend our evil nature or we are magical beings fully capable of recapitulating and launching into a new adventure.

From one magical being to another,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Apple & ISIS

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Still playing the same old record, reflecting the shadow? - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Still playing the same old record, reflecting the shadow?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

I honor this Patriot’s Day by reflecting upon the deep opposition that rocked our world on 9/11/2001 and continues, in ever-changing forms, to deepen the divide in a world so in need of reconciliation. A true patriot loves and defends his/her country. Love and the ability to defend require facing the deepest truths so that action toward reconciliation can be based on what is truly needed; we must all be willing to face the devil within ourselves.

As within, so without. The forces mirrored on the world stage reflect the deepest opposition within the psyche of the human race. Recognizing these opposing sides of ourselves offers us the opportunity to bring to wholeness our individual selves and contribute to reconciling the fundamental challenge of our time. Let us take up the challenge of inner truth versus seeking relief of this inner opposition by simply projecting the evil upon the enemy in the battle cry of war. Such distorted attempts at resolution have never succeeded as they don’t address the true reality of the opposition that is seeking solution.

And what are the opposing forces? At the deepest level these forces reflect humankind’s greatest nemesis: obedience to nature at an unquestioned instinctual level in the Garden of Eden before the fall versus eating the apple of consciousness and choice from the Tree of Knowledge. These are the opposing forces within all of us, two parts of the wholeness of who we are as human beings: instinctive beings with freedom of choice. These two forces are completely out of step in the modern world, leading to violence and opposition.

Our modern Apple has just bedazzled us with the soon to be released iWatch. Apple is the apple of the eye of the modern technological world. For all its gifts it also symbolizes a hubris of mind and technology over the instinctive needs of the world. IPhones rule the world and they keep coming with more and more promise of Eden itself, the latest watch offering to, in a sense, become our personal doctor, monitoring our heart rate, as if this could really cure the true illnesses of humanity.

Meanwhile, ISIS beheads, cuts off the ultimate houser of intellect, the head, insisting upon blind adherence to extreme fundamentalist law. ISIS is so extreme in its fundamentalist opposition to modernity that even Iran covertly aligns with the US in efforts to stop its advance.

The terrorist here is the deeply alienated, instinctive unconscious that has turned terrorist in reaction to the hubris of modernity. On 9/11/2001 it targeted the towers of Capitalism, the World Trade Center, the seat of conservatism and adherence to an old order, the symbol of a world financial order that had for so long neglected, tricked or controlled the resources of the Third World.

Time to slow the pace and get back in balance and rhythm with nature... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Time to slow the pace and get back in balance and rhythm with nature…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

I heard of a college student writing a paper comparing Google to God and the collective unconscious. The deep psyche is not a lifeless Akashic Record as Google represents but a primal force that reacts to the attitudes of consciousness that have broken ranks with its deeper nature and run away with Apple, Google and Facebook. If consciousness allows itself to be continually lured and led by its fascination with the speed and playthings of technology, it invites the collective unconscious in, whose timepiece stretches into time immemorial to produce the terrorist to slow down its pace and wind its way back to the rhythm of nature.

Individually, we must all take conscious responsibility for the direction of our lives. We must reconcile with our primal needs and instinctive wisdom as we consciously direct the course of our lives toward fulfillment of who we truly are, the seed of our individuality fully realized. If we stray too far from our instinctive needs and wisdom our lives will be sabotaged outwardly and inwardly. Paying attention to the wisdom, messages, and compensatory actions of our dreams is a good place to start to face the truth of who and where we really are.

The Dalai Lama, as the nagual, the leader of Tibetan Buddhism, has suggested ending the lineage of Dalai Lamas. Carlos Castaneda did the same thing as the final nagual of his ancient shamanic lineage. Both leaders represent guardians of ancient traditions that fully reconcile with the truths of nature and the deeper unconscious.

The message for the modern world is to take full responsibility for evolving the self, keeping in alignment with our deepest truths. Indeed, develop your iPhones of modernity, but keep an inner eye on the care of your body, along with the true needs of our interdependent world and the planet we all share. Perhaps the Dalai Lama and Carlos Castaneda, two great foresighted masters of our time, offer a model of reconciliation for the opposing energies of Apple and ISIS that threaten to split apart the world as we know it.

We all connect with the beauty of nature... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
We all connect with the beauty of nature…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Both the Dalai Lama and Castaneda, upon release of their attachment to the rigid traditions of their ancient practices, allow for the diaspora of their teachings to find their way in forms appropriate to modernity. These masters charge consciousness with assuming leadership now in taking life forward, the intent being that we all assume full and individual responsibility for addressing life’s deepest needs and truths. On this Patriot’s day, let us be true patriots and assume full responsibility for the truths: as within, so without.

Assume responsibility. Accepting the shadow ISIS within eliminates the terrorist ISIS without.

In honor and reconciliation,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Marrying Maiden & The Petty Tyrant

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Images in search of resolution... - Photo by Chuck Ketchel
Images in search of resolution…
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

The Marrying Maiden, hexagram #54 of the I Ching, is a reading I’ve grappled with much of my adult life. The Petty Tyrant is a central theme in the training of the warrior in the shamanic world of Carlos Castaneda. I see the marrying maiden and the petty tyrant as mirror images of wisdom, pearls from two ancient traditions that reflect so relevantly in the world of now.

Contrary to a sweet, innocent image that the marrying maiden might evoke, hexagram #54 depicts an unchosen life, a woman forced into the role of second wife as she must enter the home of her marrying sister’s husband, an ancient Chinese custom. Not the chosen bride she nonetheless must accept her new station and all the duties it entails. Thus, hexagram #54 depicts an unchosen, unwelcome fate.

From a broader perspective this predicament captures a salient feature of the reality of life in this world. As Buddha concluded, “Life is suffering. There is no escaping old age, sickness and death.” This is our collective reality—we are all marrying maidens to forces we cannot control.

The Shamans of Ancient Mexico discovered that we spend the bulk of our energy fighting these deeper truths of our human condition. They saw this as absorption in self-pity. I understand this as absorption in the child state of resistance to the inevitable loss of paradise that we may or may not have experienced in our early childhood. Regardless, we feel entitled to have it restored or finally delivered, refusing to leave the garden, stubbornly demanding our due.

Of course, this is a very young hero that holds the world accountable, but this young hero is ill-equipped for the adult truth of old age, sickness and suffering, that which ultimately afflicts us all. The Shamans see humankind as fixated at the stage of this young hero, wasting most of its energy fighting fruitless battles. The marrying maiden is doing the same thing, bemoaning her fate. The I Ching guides her to see the reality of her situation and to position herself appropriately without self-pity. Similarly, the Shamans encourage us to identify our petty tyrants—those who ruthlessly show no consideration for our needs—as our teachers.

Rather than spend energy on fruitless anger and resistance, a warrior stares down any energetic spillage of self-pity. A warrior fully accepts the circumstances that life presents and with clarity and full energy acts in accordance with what is possible, with what is the best decision to make, and with what is the best action to take in the moment. To achieve this readiness one must be fully present without an ounce of energy spent feeling sorry or sad for the predicament one finds one’s self in.

Ahh...peace at last! - Photo by Chuck Ketchel
Ahh…peace at last!
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

In a world currently dominated by violent opposition, where the opposites are dissociated and only seek resolution by destroying each other, we are confronted with being marrying maidens to these petty tyrants all over the world, most especially in our own country. It is challenging to not succumb to the self-pity of helplessness in such a state of chaos. On the other hand, we are gifted an opportunity to train in warriorhood.

A warrior pauses, examines the true nature of things and awaits decisive action in full clarity. A warrior spends no energy bemoaning his or her fate; all circumstances are equal opportunities to transform one’s position as fateful marrying maiden into that of decisive warrior. A warrior is grateful for all teachers, especially the petty tyrants.

Once broken of the fixation of self-pity and entitlement, we are truly freed to be leaders advancing into a new world beyond the filters of self-obsession into deeper truth, fulfillment and new balance.

Most humbly,
Chuck