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Chuck’s Place: Finding The Jewel In The Futility Of Now

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Rising of the Jewel…
-Artwork © 2026 Jan Ketchel

Our current world predicament gives rise to thoughts of pointlessness and uselessness, the very definition of futility. These thoughts activate feelings of powerlessness, defeat and depression, simply a state of generalized being that says, “What’s the use?”

Astrologically, futility is represented by the Moon in Aquarius. The moon is purely feminine. It represents the subconscious mind. I have written extensively on the divine power of the subconscious mind, that which brings to life, or manifests, all the conditions of our material world based upon the words and suggestions that impress themselves upon it.

However, the subconscious mind also keeps the score. Although it never challenges the suggestions it receives, it is bound to maintain the balance of the universe. Just as the moon never deviates in its phases, as the tides rise and fall in perfect order, so balance in nature also insists upon being restored. The subconscious mind both grants our wishes but must ultimately play out the effects of those intentions, thus the subconscious mind is also the keeper and completer of karma.

The cosmic season of Kali Yuga that we are now in is the ultimate release of the karma of all that has been suppressed for centuries. That which has been repressed to achieve civilization, with all its discontents, is now being pervasively and perversely unleashed upon our current world. This is a cosmic cleansing in the wickedest and raunchiest of forms.

It is abundantly clear to me that the unlived karma of WWII, and its outcomes, is fervently being unleashed upon the greater world. Retribution, entitlement and tribalism are shattering the agreed upon boundaries of civilization, be they boundaries of state or boundaries of civilized discourse, and, most basically, the fundamental right to life.

The subconscious mind is also the warehouse of deep habit and entrenched belief. The current wave of destruction has been particularly focused upon the most prestigious universities and the laws of science itself.

For example, previously unquestioned agreement upon medical diagnosis and treatments is now being seriously questioned, or simply eliminated. Opinion has largely replaced fact, yet consideration of perspectives previously forbidden have been opened for consideration.

The current breakdown of world order is thus a confluence of factors that include the breakthrough of collectively suppressed emotions, the payment of karmic debts, and the destruction of the previously governing constructs of reason and reality.  We are in the midst of a cosmic menstruation that is clearing out the old with unbridled ferocity.

The jewel of this universal cleansing is in the ultimate rising of Aquarius, like a phoenix from the ashes of now. As an astrological sign that defies convention, Aquarius promises a new breed of detached objectivity that is dedicated to the greater good. This is a zeitgeist that issues from truth and wisdom, above and beyond the errors of prejudice and self-interest. This is reality built upon fact and true need versus bullied opinion and greed.

The Aquarian ego, with its dedication to truth and wisdom, advances beyond the rigid fixation upon self-importance, the ruling dominant of our time. Rather than seek fame, fortune, and unlimited attention as its central goal for manifestation in life, it trusts the energy of the intent for the greater good as its chief source of influence. When the teacher is ready, the student will come; no need to hire an influencer.

The Aquarian ego deepens its relationship with energetic reality, where abundance and unlimited supply exist to manifest all things. The Aquarian ego, in alignment with serving the Higher Self, utilizes its divine power of suggestion, in consort with the subconscious mind, to serve the greater good of all. The effect, or karma, of such an intent is positive karma that continuously renews itself to fulfill the world’s deepest and truest needs.

The jewel, for us all in this time of futility, is in the encounter with our own most deeply held beliefs and secrets, which have overshadowed the truth and caused us to manifest errors in our lives. With the fuller knowing of our true selves we are released from the false beliefs that have defined and constricted our lives, and we are able to move into greater alignment with the truth of our Higher Selves.

The energy of the moon provides us with the truth and effects of our hidden selves, as Aquarius rises to lead us in this greater truth. Futility is actually the energy of Spirit working its way into manifesting this greater New Age. Futility rarifies the jewel.

Keep your knowing focused on the greater truth of now.

Refining the diamond in the rough,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Relationship Between Black Magic, Karma And Evil

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Black Magic, Karma and Evil integrated…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

Black Magic is the ego’s use of its power of suggestion to manipulate the subconscious mind to produce subtle and material effects for its own self-serving purposes. This contrasts with the exercise of suggestions intended for the greater good of the overall Self, as well as the greater good of the world. These kinds of suggestions are the ego’s use of White Magic.

Both Black and White Magic employ spells and incantations in the form of repetitive words—like prayers, intents or affirmations—that the receptive subconscious, the true mother of creation, brings to life. Words are the seeds that fertilize new life in the womb of the subconscious mind.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was made flesh,” opens John’s Gospel, describing the origin of creation. Words can produce works of evil, as well as works of high spiritual value. The subconscious does not differentiate between the two; the subconscious is a dutiful servant that does what it is told.

Words issue from the mental body, the ego part of the personality, with its thinking, reasoning and decision making capabilities. The ego has the supreme ability to exercise free will, to be its own creator of reality. Through its influence upon the subconscious, the ego has free access to the elemental forces of good and evil, the divine building blocks of our human self and our world.

The mission for ego in its life in human form is to bring harmonious balance to its innate state of polarity. Each of us are born with our own myth, a riddle to be discovered and resolved in the high art of a human life. For this, the ego must venture into the underworld of its shadow self, as well as enter into the outer world of relationship. The choices it makes are necessary engagements of both Black and White Magic. Wholeness precludes one-sidedness; wholeness is integration.

The subconscious mind is reflected in the body’s gut. The gut, at a physical level, is all about the balance of bacteria needed for proper digestion. The gut follows Nature’s Law: karma. Karma is the law of cause and effect. The gut will take the necessary actions to bring to balance the effects we have caused by the actions we have chosen.

These gut healing efforts might include great pain in the intestinal tract, or actual disease to an organ, as the gut spurs the ego to right action in its choices and suggestions to the subconscious mind.

Thus, the subconscious mind, though it does not argue with the ego about its dominant commands, and in fact carries out those commands, is fundamentally bound to Nature’s Law of karmic balance. While materializing the ego’s wishes, the subconscious is simultaneously bound to materialize its karmic consequences.

Nature makes use of the destructive elementals to enact change. Evil can be defined as the destructive action necessary to evoke change through the breakdown of rigidities. Love can be defined as the receptive energy of change, driven by the heart opening to greater inclusiveness. Love and evil are a most necessary polarity in wholeness. The challenge is to harmonize their influences in the service of refined growth.

Black Magic is part of the ego’s necessary repertoire. Sometimes the ego must oppose nature’s law of balance. Of course, those decisions will evoke a karmic consequence that may seriously sideline the ego. Watch out what you ask for!

Nonetheless, as creators, we are scientists destined to experiment. We are truly on a mission from God to know and refine who we are—in our wholeness, both good and evil.

Evil is a necessary tool for both the ego and the subconscious. Evil is the mental body’s free-will teacher and refiner. The mind will reflect upon the consequences of its decisions, which may modify subsequent actions.

Evil is also Nature’s karmic tool of balance, the primary controlling  suggestion to the subconscious mind. The challenge is to bring free will and karma into good balance.

Perhaps the best guidance was offered by don Juan Matus, Carlos Castaneda’s teacher: Have a romance with knowledge, the knowledge of good and evil. Explore everything, but don’t get overly attached to anything.

Or, as Julia Child recommended, have but a small taste of everything.

In conclusion, choose the best balance for where you are now!

Harmonizing,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Karma For Better

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We all must face the highs and lows of karmic destiny…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

Karma is destiny, the inevitable effect of a previous cause. That which goes up must come down. And, according to Newton’s Third Law, the force with which it lands will cause a reaction of equal force. This repetitive back-and-forth volleying generates a groundhog day habit of karmic stuckness.

We must circumambulate our habitual beingness until we accrue the consciousness to clearly see our individual core karmic leitmotif. Once filled with awareness of our karmic duty we are then freed to exercise our will to address our oppositions and eventually shift our lives in an equal and reconciled new direction. This is using karma for better.

Esther Harding states:
“The marvel is that there is not a perpetual state of war within the psyche, for each of these elements is endowed with energy and so cannot die. Fortunately for our sanity, many of these irreconcilable elements lie deep within the unconscious, locked in primordial sleep; those which may have stirred are shut away in separate compartments. But as life progresses and an increase of consciousness is achieved, the inner conflicts awaken, and the problem of reconciling the oppositions they reveal has to be undertaken as a serious and urgent task.” –M.E. Harding, Psychic Energy

Cherokee guide Joyce Sequichie Hifler, in A Cherokee Feast of Days, speaks to the karma of a pond turning over. It’s nature’s way of cleaning house. The stagnant energy settled at the bottom of the pond activates, mixes with other strata of water, and rises to the surface. And yes, the whole pond of human affairs needs to turn over at times. This is the cosmic karma of now.

Judge Hatch, a Master teacher in the astral realm, hovered over the battlefields of Earth throughout WW1, channeling his observations and guidance for humanity to his scribe Elsa Barker, in War Letters. His intent was to empower humanity to advance beyond the perennial karma of war. His empowering technology is available to every human being to reconcile with both the warring factions within the self, as well as in the world. Here’s a method to transform hate, the mother of all wars:

“…Has anyone injured you in the struggle of life?—for life is a kind of war. Go out in thought to those whose desires have clashed with your desires, those who have hurt you or hated you. Go to them one by one—not several at a time in this exercise, and one by one try to understand them. See yourself with their eyes, feel toward yourself with their hearts. If they still hate you, you may hate yourself at first in sympathy with them. But remaining there in sympathy with them, you will gradually feel their hard thoughts of you change, gradually begin to be friends with yourself through them.”  –Elsa Barker, War Letters From The Living Dead Man.

Judge Hatch emphasizes that this exercise is not a subconscious abuse of black magic to control another because its objective is consonant with the intent of the High Self, one of unselfish union and positive evolution. Carolyn Elliot describes similar exercises of appreciation for the warring factions within the self in her book, Existential Kink.

From the perspective of every individual human as a single cell in the wholeness of everything, every effort—even that of a single person—will impact the state of balance in the overall whole. Furthermore, every individual, however disagreeable, is a permanent member of the whole, for energy cannot die.

What is changeable is the balance between the parts within the whole. We all, as individuals, are subject to the karma of our attitudes, decisions, and actions. The human race, as a whole, is subject to its karma as well. The artistry of being human is our ability to sculpt our beingness with attitudes, decisions, and behaviors that advance our karma for better.

As Judge Hatch describes, the practice of deeply appreciating the perspective of one’s enemy, especially feeling their hatred toward oneself, mitigates the intensity of one’s own anger, harmonizing an opposition within the self and impacting positively one’s outer relationship with the hated other.

Perhaps this technology can be simply summarized in the words of an earlier Master, “love thy enemy.” That’s how to advance the self and use one’s karma for better.

For the better,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: I Fought The Tao and The Tao Won

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In the Tao…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Sometimes a song gets into the head and keeps on playing. For me it’s generally a spirit sending a message. The other day I sang the line “I fought the law and the law won”. The tune hooked Jan as well and she found herself a little frustrated that my tune successfully suggested itself to her own subconscious with incessant replays!

Of course, as always, I searched for the synchronous relevance of the message to our lives. It came quickly that the law is the Tao, and the Tao always wins. I understand the Tao to be the underlying rules of nature that control all of life. The central rule of the Tao is the law of cause and effect: Every action will cause a reaction.

A common example of this would be karma. When we recapitulate our lives we will determine what we must do next, based upon the life we have lived. The actions of our lives are the causes that determine the reactions—where life will take us next.

Strictly speaking, everything is Tao. All actions cause reactions, thus all actions are indeed part of the Tao. Thus, even a hurtful action is part of the Tao and will be appropriately compensated for by a reaction of equal intensity. Nonetheless, the expression to be in the Tao means to respond in the best possible way, the most efficient, least line of resistance to a given situation.

Nature herself expresses the Tao at its most favorable action. The waters of a stream accumulate most patiently in a crevice, awaiting the moment of saturation for the stream to proceed upon its course. Humans are endowed with the ability to take the Tao to extremes in their decision making, losing the favorable status of being in the Tao.

Thus, if someone is aggressive and cutting, the best response might be to go inward, depersonalize the action, have compassion for the other’s state of imbalance, then calmly move on. To challenge the offender is another option, which will illicit its own reaction. Both actions are governed by the Tao, however, the former may be said to be in the Tao.

The Taoist oracle, the I Ching, teaches us the Tao of all changes, while also highlighting the best actions to take to remain in the Tao when confronted with any situation. Most mornings, before sunrise, Jan and I feed a couple of feral cats up the road. We wear headlamps to find our way in the dark. For two days in a row, as the tune “I fought the law…” moved through me, I was attacked by giant hornets along the road, apparently attracted to the light.

On the second day, as we walked Jan’s beautiful quartz labyrinth before sunrise, I was again attacked by a giant hornet that actually made me jump into another rung of the labyrinth. Mind you, we have routinely done these behaviors for weeks and never been attacked.

Suddenly, it dawned on us that autumn has arrived and that the hornets are confused and jumpy, as their end is near. We were adding to their confusion, bringing light into night, and they were reacting to this intrusion. We realized that indeed we were fighting the Tao’s law of the change of seasons, and that law had won.

The next morning we waited until sunrise to feed the cats and walk the labyrinth. We were indeed in the Tao; no attacks, just a calm, thankful meow.

Might I suggest, to the subconscious of all, another Taoist mantra for your listening pleasure:

All you need is love, love is all you need, love is all you need, love is all you need…..

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Sympathy For The Devil

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The devil you know…

The great value an exhaustively repeated negative behavior pattern offers is the irrefutable evidence it provides for learning the law of cause and effect. At a certain point, after finding ourselves in the same place, after repeating the same set of behaviors, we can say to ourselves with confidence and certainty: “If I say, do or think such and such, I will feel frustrated, disappointed, angry, hopeless and depressed.”

Of course, as St. Paul humbly admitted, knowing the law of cause and effect is no guarantee that the same demon compulsion won’t steal the show again and again and again!

Nonetheless, realizing the law of cause and effect with respect to a behavioral pattern is the first step in overcoming ignorance, what the Buddists call avidya. Overcoming ignorance is the only way to change our karma, if we understand karma to be the inevitable outcome of repetitive behavior. It might feel like punishment, but in truth karma rests completely in our own hands as the law of cause and effect demonstrates: repeat the same behavior, cause the same outcome.

If we remain ignorant of the outcomes of our behaviors we stay glued to them. Each day we wake up to our revitalized, reincarnated selves, still bound to the karma of the ignorance of the self we went to sleep with. This endless round of repetition is, however, essential, as each revolution of the wheel accrues irrefutable evidence of the karmic law of cause and effect.

Some day, in some life, it will serve to awaken us from our sleepy repetitive selves with knowledge and a readiness to change. We will simply know too much to be fooled once again. We know where it definitely leads and we don’t need to go there one more time. We have too much experience to take the bait. The tasty morsel or seductive promise of the entity—the devil behind the compulsion—is no longer interesting. The entity is dismissed, freed to move on to new life, mission accomplished, and so are we. Ironically, the entity is a slave to our own awakening and remains bound to us until we can honestly tell it to leave.

These devils, or petty tyrants as the shamans of Ancient Mexico called them, are actually our liberators. Those shamans sought to come under the influence of such devilish petty tyrants so that they might shed any vestige of self-importance, a critical component of achieving total freedom and fully awakening to our true selves and fullest potential.

Our petty tyrants…

Petty tyrants come in many forms, visible and invisible. Visible tyrants are those in our lives—family members, bosses, politicians, abusers, etc. Invisible petty tyrants show up as compulsions, overwhelming moods and emotions, limiting beliefs, and spellbinding projections that land on people and objects in the world.

What all tyrants have in common is their ability to force us into repetitive negative behavior patterns—they bind our lives; they control our karma. They attack our most vulnerable selves, the core of our self worth, without mercy!

We feel stuck, worthless, hopeless, out of control, overly in control, helpless, frozen, fatalistic, or even suicidal/homicidal in reaction to our tyrants. How can we possibly evolve in such a circumstance? How can we ever be free? So begins the cycle of repetitive negative behavior in thought, word, and deed that begins our training in the law of cause and effect. These negative patterns of self-hate and hate of others, of self-imprisonment and imprisonment of others, might last a lifetime or perhaps many lifetimes, however, our wheel of repetition is ultimately our wheel of liberation.

Once we learn the law of cause and effect, we are freed to detach from our devilish tyrant that has lost its power over us. Detachment means that our power is withdrawn from the tyrant; it can no longer hold us in check. We are then freed to fully move on to greater fulfillment, karma erased.

If we don’t feel compassion for our disempowered tyrant/devil that has held our power for us until we were ready to claim it through choice and change, we are caught in another permutation of the same karma, negative pattern revisited. Anger at the tyrant binds our energy to it, and so we are still not free.

True freedom means no attachment whatsoever to the energy of the tyrant, only gratitude for a job well done. Ultimate freedom lies in sympathy for the devil, as we both part ways and move away into new life.

Sympathizing,
Chuck

Here is a rendition of The Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil by Rickie Lee Jones.