Have you fallen under the spell of something? What happened to your personal power? Who took your energy? Discern what is personal energy and what is not. Distinguish between your problems and those of others. Take note: the collective energy that swirls around you may also have infected you. Not all feelings, emotions, thoughts, ideas, mental and physical problems originate inside you. Have you taken on something that does not belong to you, that is impersonal, of a collective nature? If that is your intent, to champion for a greater cause, then do so with conscious awareness, but do not let impersonal energy, grand causes, or collective energy usurp your own and use it for its own purposes. You may be feeling the weigh of such a spell upon you.
Get right within the self. Know yourself again, what your own energy feels like. Reconnect with your own feelings and emotions rather than identifying with and taking on those of others. Let yourself reconnect with your own highest goals for yourself. Find your spirit again and make amends. Stay connected at a higher and deeper level of self and ask your questions about the rightness of things there, within the self. That’s where all your true answers lie, within the self. Get right within. Discard that which does not belong. Keep only that which is truly you. And be okay with who you truly are. Rebuild your strength and your personal power within the body and with your spirit firmly at your core. Get right. And find your joy again!
Carl Jung discovered the Collective Unconscious, a layer of the mind all beings share in common, what the ancient Hindus identified as Universal Mind.Edgar Cayce validated its existence through accessing, in trance, the Akashic Record to provide spot-on medical diagnosis and treatment recommendations. Joe McMoneagle equally accessed this dimension of all-knowing through Remote Viewing, proving its utility for military intelligence and solving ancient mysteries.
What Edgar Cayce and Joe McMoneagle teach is the use of deep relaxation of left brain focused ego dominance as a pathway to direct experience and access to all knowledge, the deepest level of the collective unconscious that we all share. These methods can be trained to waking consciousness.
Dreaming, where ego relaxes its focused left brain dominance in order to fall asleep, also takes place in the realm of the collective unconscious. Thus, it is possible to encounter deceased relatives or living archetypes, such as gods and goddesses, or virtual treasure maps, in one’s nightly journeys in the all-knowing Universal Mind of being.
Dreaming provides opportunities for the Universal Mind of the collective unconscious, or SOUL, to communicate profound knowledge to waking ego consciousness. This linkage of Universal Mind to personal ego requires dream interpretation.
The first stage in dream interpretation, and perhaps the most challenging, is to remember the dream.
Everyone dreams. It was scientifically demonstrated in sleep labs long ago that anyone who is deprived of dreaming for three days will become psychotic. Restitution of dreaming quickly reverses this condition. Remembering dreams, however, is a matter of intent. State, in advance of sleep, “I intend to remember my dream tonight.”
Stage two is to value whatever dream fragments one wakes up with and write them down. Like a hooked fish quickly slipping back into the ocean, a vivid dream not recorded is gone after even a quick visit to the bathroom. In particular, watch out for King Ego, master of the waking world: “Oh, that’s stupid, irrelevant, nonsense, etc., …” Follow Carlos Castaneda’s number one rule: Suspend Judgment. Write it down!
Stage three is to track immediate associations as you recall and write the dream. Last night I had a tin can of bluefin tuna in a dream. As I remembered the dream next morning, I immediately flashed to an article I’d read of a Japanese restaurant owner paying $3.1 million dollars for a large bluefin tuna at auction. Suffice it to say that this “prized fish,” contained in its leaden mandala tin, perfectly mirrors the current stage of my own opus of individuation.
Stage four. Once personal associations are exhausted, take it to the next level: Google. Google is humankind’s collective conscious effort to mirror the all-knowing collective unconscious. It is a great aid in deciphering the universal symbolic language of the vast collective unconscious.
I offer an example from a recent dream of Jan’s. Jennifer Lawrence and Lawrence Osborne show up as characters in the dream. Jan knew of and had associations to actress Jennifer Lawrence but had never heard of Lawrence Osborne. Quick google research produced a nomadic author of some repute. Jan has here to face her own nomadic author self, who has written deeply valuable books about her own shamanic recapitulation, combined with facing a latent extraverted Jennifer Lawrence self!
Jan next looked up the name Lawrence. Ultimate derivation of the name Lawrence is laurel, symbolically referring to Daphne, who ran from rape by transforming into a laurel tree. (Side note: many of Jan’s paintings include a tree). Daphne is both a symbol of perseverance and frozen avoidance of life. These associations help Jan explore the current balance of her hermitic introverted and confident extraverted selves.
These associations, both personal and collective, string together a profound communication from SOUL to ego Soul, essentially gifting a willing ego Soul with a direction for the playing field of waking life.
Google doesn’t always get it right, though. Ego Soul must decide upon what personally resonates and then take action—that is the completion of the dream. It is a grand opportunity to bridge the SOUL/ego Soul relationship and communication in the completion of one’s life karma, or mission on Earth, this time around.
I am writing to the future, the day this will be published, the morning after the midterm elections. For the record, my final edit for this blog was on the morning of November 6, 2018, well in advance of outcomes in time and space. My intent is that the electorate free its mind from manipulation and vote from the heart for the greater good of all. I will accept the outcome of the election as a true reading of the status of our collective soul now.
Tripartite: heaven and earth with the light of the intellect in between… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
I define mind as soul, the subtle body companion of our physical body for the duration of our lives in this world. The soul is a tripartite structure consisting of the inherent collective unconscious with its instinctive knowing, the ego with its intellect and capacity for reason, and the high self that is guided by infinity through intuition and love.
Recently, we have seen the rapid emergence of instinct, with its passionate emotions, take charge of world governance. This is an archetypal response, from the collective unconscious dimension of the soul, to the Earth’s current major reshaping and the primal dread it awakens at our animal core. Survival is its battle cry.
Our reasoning mind has either been convinced of instinct’s call to arms, and leant it support, or opposed its radical approach, embodying, instead, calls for greater unity and compassion.
The question for this midterm was whether the escalating instinctive approach would continue to grow, or a movement toward more inclusive values would begin to assert itself.
Regardless of outcome, the Earth will continue its radical changes, and the human animal will continue to experience fear and anxiety in response. The problem for humans, as well as all species on Earth, is that the environment is shifting into unknown territory, where old tried and true instinctive responses cannot effectively assimilate the current dangers.
The intellect that has the capacity to analyze a problem and oppose even its own nature to effect a solution may be equally disadvantaged if it cannot detach from personal interest or the thrill of unbridled emotion. Furthermore, the real solution to survival in this changing world might require opening to the guidance of an intuition that transcends pure reason.
Clearly, cooperation by all parts of the tripartite soul would best prepare us to ride the tide of our evolutionary challenge. From our instinct emerges the alarm of real threat to survival. From our intellect emerges the ability to analyze and act in our best interest. From our high self comes the experience of pure love, which binds the world together in common interest. Thus, the combination of instinct, intellect, and love are the winning ticket.
Regardless of the outcome of this election, our evolutionary path requires us to access the fullness of our tripartite soul to find our way. Regardless of the outcome of the election, every individual is free to travel this evolutionary path within the confines of their own physical body and tripartite soul.
In fact, the greatest of leaders throughout history were masters of their tripartite souls, to such a degree that they inspired humanity to higher spiritual directions, merely through the presence of their evolved personalities.
Focus now on evolving the personality through acknowledging the anxiety from below, through thinking objectively and initiating right action, and by finding inspiration and intuitive solution from the love and wisdom that comes from above. This is the tripartite ticket to facing one’s deepest issues within, as well as managing one’s reactions to the volatility expressed without.
Never feel powerless; you are the agent of change. Change the self, change the world.
We meet the animal that we are in the bathroom. Despite the soft, white, scented Charmin’ tissue paper that we wipe ourselves with, what leaves our bodies is stinky, sticky and dark, the color and texture of muddy earth.
C. G. Jung suggested that the bathroom is the room where we most encounter our instinctual selves, thus it is equated symbolically with the collective unconscious. The day I read Jung’s reflections on this specific subject, a client, who has graciously agreed to allow me to share it, had the following interaction with me:
Me: “So, have you had any dreams?”
Client: “Funny you should ask, I had a disgusting dream that I’m not going to tell you” (and then she did).
Here is a summary of the dream: “I’m in a red-neck setting, one I’d never be in. I’m hidden under a tree. I’m on my side looking at people. Suddenly and uncontrollably I take a long, foamy bowel movement. I’m extremely embarrassed. I move away, afraid they’ll find out it was from me. I decide to go back to cover it over but can’t find it.”
As we reflected on the dream we came to understand that the client was attempting to get away from something deeply uncomfortable, hidden in the shadow of the self, something “behind her,” a fact she’d much rather keep “flushed away” from herself. Her instinctual dream would not let her get away with this however.
We unearthed the disowned fact, which reached back decades into childhood. The shit became a pearl and opened the door to address and shift a lifelong source of shame.
Jung pointed out that the alchemists considered excrement to be a prima materia from which gold could eventually be extracted. They called this stage in their experimental operations the nigredo.
In these modern times, humanity identifies itself as a rational mind, a fast acting logical computer that I would call a spirit self. In our times, spirit has withdrawn from the heavens and been reframed as the mental place, the thinking brain. Spirit humans hardly see themselves as animals governed by bodily dictates.
In our dream, the instinctual self teaches the spirit/mental self, that avoids earthy red-neck environments, that the gold lies in that which is most rejected and avoided in the self.
Everyone has had dreams of public toilets without doors or of defecating uncontrollably in public places. These dreams are really about our deepest nature attempting to draw our attention to that which we are most afraid to expose ourselves or others to, and yet, like the diamond that emerges from the blackest coal, these dreams really should be treated as holy shit.
If we allow ourselves to own the shit, refusing to be shut down by shame or embarrassment, we disarm our emotional defenses and free ourselves to become more human and to discover the most valuable pearls of wisdom from the refuse of our own bodies.
We are all part of this vast collective we call home… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Carl Jung broadened the scope of who we are as human beings by introducing us to the Collective Unconscious, a vast region within ourselves that we share in common with all human beings, in fact with the entire planetary being, planet Earth.
Earth is a living being whose survival is ensured by a powerful governing body that Jung defined as the Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. All human beings are equally impacted by these governing forces that emanate from the deep unconscious of the planetary being Earth, of whom we are all a part while in human physical form.
Archetypes are rules and definitions existing independently of human beings. Preceding our personal selves, they shape our perceptions, interpretations, emotions, and actions in each moment of our lives, inhibiting our ability to be present in the purity, in the actual truth of each moment.
In a dream, Jan and I go to visit my long-deceased mother in her apartment on a holiday. She has been ill, physically incapacitated and limited in movement. I suggest immediately that we go out to eat. This is a visit to Mother who must be honored as special, treated royally on this day of celebration.
Jan says, “No. Ask her if she really wants to go out.” As suggested, I ask Mother. She says no. She’s relieved at not having to rise to the occasion. Relief for all.
The dream illustrates how the archetype Mother precedes the reality and the true physical disposition of the human being who resides in the apartment. The archetype demands reverence, honoring, special action, excitement, and celebration. The human person needs only rest.
Archetypes generate fear, anger, love, anxiety and awe. Archetypes define life and judge our ability to do the right thing. This dream clearly illustrates how the archetypes of Mother and Child take over the feelings and expectations of an encounter, so removed from the actual needs of the moment.
We too are earth-bound beings first… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Archetypes correspond with chakras. The first two chakras, the root and the sex chakra, are concerned with individual survival and survival of the species via copulation. The planetary being, Earth, has control of the chakras around these issues to ensure its own survival. Two archetypes at this level are the Child and the Soul Mate.
The child archetype evokes very powerful emotions of protection in adults, as they see in the child ultimate vulnerability and innocence. The helplessness and fragility in the newborn and young child evokes the necessary responses from caretakers, spurring them to make great sacrifices in their own lives and attend to the survival needs of these deeply dependent beings. Failure to thrive by a young innocent life can evoke the most powerful sadness in adults, as they find themselves powerless to assist the failing child.
The healthy child archetype serves to spur the core survival needs of new life on Earth. However, too often the child archetype continues to govern beyond necessity and when this happens the opportunity to become an independent autonomous being is delayed or totally denied. In such cases, the child archetype rules well past its usefulness, resulting in a being who is ever-dependent on others for their survival.
Inwardly, the child archetype can distort one’s relationship with one’s own inner child. When the archetypal child takes over it can evoke an overwhelming sadness that induces utter despondency in a bottomless pit of helplessness. Sometimes we may be tricked into thinking we must release our sadness in a great catharsis of tears, expecting relief and healing, only to discover that the wound never heals. This is not human activity, this is the child archetype ever-extracting our energy, keeping us in the grip of powerlessness and woundedness.
We must vehemently stand up to this archetype and shoo it away if we are ever to be able to take hold of our will and achieve adult autonomy in life. If we are ever to develop mature relationships with our families we must break away from the rudimentary archetypes that govern family relationships. Our spiritual development requires that we all become independent equal beings, no matter what our roles once were within the family. We must grow up to become mature adult peers facing the same destiny: death and preparation for what comes next.
The soul mate archetype at the second chakra level is ruthlessly interested in having us hook up and make babies. The power of the sexual instinct under the rulership of the archetype controls most individuals for the better part of their lives. If people are completely honest, the drive for sex and children dominates life from puberty through midlife.
Drawn by powerful archetypes… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Most relationships shine with promise in the beginning, sprinkled with the fairy dust of the soul mate archetype. Post-coitus, and particularly post-children, the archetype deserts a couple as its job is done. There’s nothing in the archetypal program beyond coitus. If you want a mature relationship you’re on your own. Many relationships break up at this point, partners split, often to be drawn once again, by the reactivated archetype, to feel the entitlement of promised magic and wholeness projected onto yet another.
I recently recalled a haunting song that I always felt stirred the soul mate archetype, Wicked Game by Chris Isaaks, a brooding song of archetypal projected love. I found a video that he made for the song on Youtube, one I’d never seen. I include it here —Wicked Game— as it is a wonderful exposition of the powerful draw of the archetype, a man possessed, a woman responding but clearly merely playing a part. There is no personal relationship here. The archetype is a witch’s brew—Watch out!
I recall in my twenties how overwhelmed I was by the soul mate archetype, by the flood of women in their summer attire as I moved about Manhattan. One day, I realized I was exhausted by the time I got to work at 9 a.m. from the unending stream of stimulation! I decided to fight back, to break the slavery I was caught in by an archetype bent on taking over my life.
From that day on I blurred my vision whenever I detected a woman approaching from afar. After about six months I’d completely broken the spell! I allowed my eyes to go in focus once again and realized: I just don’t have to look! The archetype never again exerted its power over me as it once did. I was able to see woman as person, period!
Ready to take your place in a different light? – Photo by Chuck Ketchel
The archetypes at the first two chakras are nature at its fundamental best. However, as we ascend to the heart chakra we discover that these same archetypes exist at a spirit level, beyond the domain of the planetary being Earth. Soul mate at the heart level is a genuine outpouring of compassion and love for another, a deeper appreciation for who the other is as a person and a partner. At the highest level the soul mate archetype guides to merge with our own soul in enlightenment. Similarly, the child archetype at the highest level brings us to the truth and innocent essence of who we are as we shed our egos in preparation for merger with our divine selves.
To rise to the spiritual heights, we must pass through and engage the archetypes at the level of the first two chakras, but we must refuse their dominance if we are ever to reach our spiritual completion and move beyond our cycles of bondage to reincarnated Earth lives and move on to new adventures in infinity.
