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Chuck’s Place: Controlled Folly to Temper the Spirit

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Temper that spirit, you gluttonous bee, and control your folly!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

We live in the most spirited of times! Exhilaration is thrilling yet energetically exhausting, and as current events highlight, potentially perilous. Conserving and accruing energy is key to longevity and full self-realization in human form.

The Shamans of Ancient Mexico developed a practice they called controlled folly to conserve energy, through tempering the human spirit. The human spirit is actually the ego-Soul portion of one’s greater SOUL. The two are connected, but it is the ego-Soul that lives and acts upon the world stage in our current sojourn in human form. It is the ego-Soul that grasps at life and wants more. Our greater SOUL lives as our silent partner, in infinity, the more comprehensive context of the human life we are currently in.

Controlled folly is engaging one’s ego-Soul in one’s chosen path of heart in this world, with great earnestness, like a true warrior and yet, having NO attachment to the outcome  of one’s actions. This detached edge is possible because one never loses touch with the fuller backdrop of one’s surrounding life in infinity.

The Shamans cite three essential facts, gifts of wisdom from the greater SOUL, as the foundation of controlled folly: (1) All life in human form is transitory and terminal, hence, (2) regardless of the role we play, or story we live, all roads lead to the exact same ending: death in human form, therefore, (3) the greater backdrop of all human life is our full transition into infinity, the ultimate destination of our definitive journey.

Shamans see, in some form, their energetic interconnectedness with everything, glimpses of infinity. Shamans read their journeys in dreaming, and the synchronicities in everyday life, as revelations and promptings from their greater SOUL to wake up to the fuller storyline of their ongoing life in infinity. By inviting the full awareness of ultimate death into their current incarnation, they transform an ordinary life into a magical life.

From this seemingly morbid perspective an individual can recognize that indeed, all the world’s a stage. And, as Carlos Castaneda once recommended, be the best actor you can be in the role you’ve chosen during your present time on the human world stage. Live the life you’ve chosen to the fullest, yet don’t get too attached to its significance; it’s not the main event or the only event.

Practicing controlled folly does not absent us from expressing human emotion. What great actor has not fully lived and expressed the true emotions of their role. Nonetheless, when the show is over the actor disengages from the role and shifts to their true human identity.

Controlled folly allows us to live with passion while knowing that, in the ultimate sense, none of it really matters. Thus, we can simultaneously be incredibly engaged in all that life offers, with utter seriousness, yet ultimately, be completely detached. This dual focus is how we temper our passionate spirit and how we are able to let go when what we have fought for doesn’t come to pass.

Similar to the message of the Bhagavad Gita, Carlos deemphasized the morality of the role you play. No one role is more important than another. To judge harshly another’s role is to get caught in the self-importance of overvaluing the particular play you are in. All roles are parts of the play, angels and demons alike, creating a complete cast. To remember this is how to temper our own extreme emotional reactions to the dance of now, that which is taking place upon our world stage. All spirits are equal actors in the play, and yes, Marianne Williamson, though some are dark psychic forces, they nonetheless have critical parts in the play.

Life in this world is extremely important, why live it as a failed play? But at the same time, it’s all relative when contrasted with forever, the greater reality we will all return to when this play is done. Nonetheless, this is our play now, our moment in time to experience this drama to the fullest, and that matters; and yet, at the same time, it doesn’t. This moment is assured its place in infinity’s ultimate historical record, the Akashic record. It will never be erased, no fake news in infinity’s library. Nonetheless, it is only one moment among infinite moments.

The significance of the play we are currently in is the completion of Kali Yuga, the utter destruction and disintegration of civilization’s  highest achievements. But what is the reality that lies beneath civilization’s false self? Freud really did call it accurately when he called civilization a sublimated id. What has emerged from the depths of the collective human shadow now is the repressed ancient rivalries and conundrums that have never been resolved in our revolving human dream. We’ve all acted in plays together before; this is just one more show. And yet we have an opportunity to finally resolve some things that we’ve left hanging from previous lives.

Where, for instance, on the globe is the core center of volatile unrest? In the lands of the Middle East, of course, where ancient issues have yet to be resolved. Who’s entitled to the land? How does one protect what they feel is their’s? Simple questions, ancient, never-solved dilemmas. We all have them.

And yet, these ancient core dilemmas are impacting the safety of the globe, and they are being mirrored in the dominant politics and daily atrocities in most countries throughout the world, impacting us all. We are coming frightfully close to absolute rulers, outright racism, nuclear winter, concentration camps, and flirtations with final solutions. We’ve lost our perspective on the greater reality we all face.

As the Shamans codified, it is our awareness of death that elevates our time in this world from ordinary life to magical power. Why settle for a redundant, mediocre play when we can elevate our time here to a Tony award performance! Why not let all the actors stand on center stage to deliver their best performances? Why settle for world neurosis as the best compromised dream we can deliver? There is so much more.

Woodstock 50 is cancelled, no time for hallucinogenic reruns, but alas, Marianne Williamson has entered center stage! She is indeed the ticket to call out the dark side of the force. The play we are now in would best be played by such a rivalry; Donald Trump requires such an opponent as Marianne Williamson. He gets bored, and rightfully so, without a worthy opponent to challenge him.

We must all call upon controlled folly here to temper the spirit. We are all here for such a brief moment, such a brief appearance on the world stage. At the end of the day, the curtain falls and it’s the end of an era; this play is over. All of us will exit the stage, where we will shake hands with our fellow cast members, all rivalries dissolved. Only self-importance, the seed of reincarnation, will keep us replaying the same drama.

Controlled folly offers us the opportunity to truly advance the issues that have thwarted humankind for eons. Imagine Marianne’s Department of Peace. Imagine hugs in the Middle East. Yes, John, we can still Imagine, but with the edge of controlled folly we can do it with no attachment to the outcome.

Live the dream, intend it forward, and when it’s time to go, exit the stage, in love with it all.

Don’t hold back,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Heat wave reading!

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The above link explains what is happening in the world environmentally and in terms of the utter disintegration of morals. From a rich Hindu understanding of cycles of time, what we are experiencing now is objective and far transcends the foolishness of blame, which is rampant in our world today. The year 2025, only 6 years away, represents the completion of the Kali Yuga age, the darkest period in human civilization that accompanies major environmental transitions on a planet wide level. What is rapidly changing is inevitable. We are at the completion of the darkest of dark times, which will be followed by a regenerated civilization, whose consciousness will move gradually toward a new Golden Age. This conception of cycles vastly contrasts with the notion of evolutionary progression as linear. From this cyclical perspective evolution progresses in a cycle that ultimately regresses. We are now at its lowest stage of regression. As the last placed 1960s Mets used to say: “The only place to go is up!” And voila! In 1969 the rock bottom Mets became the Miracle Mets, winning their first World Series.
 
Today, we celebrate the landing of the Apollo astronauts on the moon, 50 years ago in that miracle year of 1969, the same year that the Woodstock Music Festival forecasted a world of peace and love. So, don’t despair, the only place we have to go is up!
Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Love will win

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Heart rising up…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

“There’s always a bit of heaven in a disaster area!” exclaimed Wavy Gravy, as the rains fell and the traffic snarled at the Woodstock Music Festival, fifty years ago this August. When I listened to Marianne Williamson at the 2020 Democratic Presidential Debate, I shared Wavy Gravy’s reaction, toward the chaos of now, “there’s always a bit of heaven in a disaster area!”

Love has arrived at the top echelon of political discourse. Love rises when it faces a truly worthy opponent. To continue on a path of knowledge in the world of the Shamans of Ancient Mexico, one must encounter a truly worthy opponent. In a recent Netflix episode, David Letterman and Howard Stern respectfully acknowledged the power of love’s most worthy opponent as they discussed the many personal interviews they had each conducted with Donald Trump over the past 30 years.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal called this past June the warmest gain in the Dow since 1938. This past week, France suffered the warmest temperatures in its history. Where’s the connection?

Last week,  Duke Energy representative Randy Wheeless, in North Carolina, explained his company’s reluctance to pursue renewable energy. “I think a lot of environmentalists talk about the end of the world, but there are a lot of people still worried about the end of the month, and how to pay bills,” he said. What bills will be left to pay “when the Garden is gone,” as Neil Young sings?

The truth is evident. The issue of now is not what is true but what is right. Immigrant children are taken from their parents; this is government policy, which will cause deep, perhaps irreparable psychological damage to those children. This is scientifically known truth.

In this case, the coveted ‘end’ of illegal immigration is said to justify this inhumane ‘means.’ America First has supplanted what once made America the world’s great beacon of hope. America has lost its connection to the heart in the service of personal gain at all costs.

This national foray into heartless narcissism has been an incredibly humbling outing of America’s shadow. We all must face the preponderance of self-importance and the facade of altruism behind  our noble American Dream. America stalked the heart center at its founding but has always masked its self-serving intent.

Thankfully, but dangerously, that facade has crumbled. As individuals we are challenged to face the preponderance of our narrow personal survival fears. Is the stock market’s contribution to our retirement more important than the survival of the world? Is trade really the highest god?

The worthy opponent of now is fixation at the third chakra, the home of narcissistic personal power. That fixation is obsessed only with the accrual of its own power. From its perspective, personal needs trump the survival of the world. We must all reckon with our attachment to this fixation. Masked altruism is what landed us here.

Real love awaits at the heart chakra. Real love embraces the truths and needs of the one world we are all part of. The heart chakra faces the truth of survival needs and will require, of all, great sacrifice to survive as a world.

We find our way to the heart by facing our own deepest truth with compassion. We then turn that compassion, however ruthlessly, to all the worthy opponents who boldly honor narcissism. No parts can be left out of the whole. From there, the heart will guide.

I hear Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young singing to me, from within, “Carry on, love is coming, love is coming to us all…..”  Happy 4th. Celebrate true Independence.

Carry on,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: On The Edge of Narcissism

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What does it mean to be living in this time of The Trump Show? This thinly veiled reference to the movie The Truman Show casts no aspersions upon Trump but intends instead to present an incisive understanding of the momentous time we are living in.

There’s a whole new reality out there!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

In The Truman Show, Jim Carrey’s character, Truman, lived his complete life on a TV set, totally unaware that he was the only real character in a fabricated story that the rest of the world vicariously watched on their screens. He naively lived this personal illusion, which was completely supported by consumer interest. The climax of the movie was the moment he discovered the boundary of his illusion, a fake ocean in a flat room, and a three dimensional world beyond it that he had never known existed.

Jim Carrey’s moment of revelation is symbolic of the time when human consciousness was confronted with the reality that the world was not flat, that explorers did not fall off the edge of it on their ocean voyages. At that moment, world consciousness realized that it had been locked into a belief system, like Jim Carrey, that kept it insulated from true reality, largely due to its isolated, confined, narrow-minded view of the world. Once that revelation came, everything changed.

That moment of revelation can be characterized as standing on the edge of narcissism and glimpsing the true nature of someone or something other than the mirror of one’s personal belief system, the lens through which one ordinarily perceives the world. It’s that moment on a date, when the one who has talked about him or herself, non-stop for an hour, suddenly looks up and notices the other person at the opposite side of the table, and asks, “And what about you?” The implication: Something beyond me exists, a startling revelation!

Human consciousness is currently nearing such a moment of revelation. Donald Trump is our Truman, bringing us to the edge of narcissism, to the boundaries of our belief systems that veil a more comprehensive view of reality. In one form or another, we are all players on the set of the Trump Show. The main technology of his show is sheer impulse and unpredictability, and we are all gripped and contained in the fiery energy of the drama.

No longer do we have a comprehensive collective belief system about how people should behave, what news is fit to print, how natural disasters or assassinations should be handled. Instead, we’ve  splintered into clusters of opposing views, where even the Commander-in-chief might impulsively, completely reverse himself, at any moment, on any given day.

This plethora of opposing beliefs keeps us locked into warring differences that vie for supremacy, an attempt by each side to install their belief system as the overarching truth. However, the more sublime impact of the Trump Show is the revelation that belief systems are just that, bulwarks of narcissism that veil other truths and realities, and prevent deeper exploration and knowing of those truths and realities.

And now, as we begin to see through the relativity of our limiting belief systems, what is the broader reality that approaches us?

Energetic reality is the new frontier. The Trump Show has laid bare the dominance of the survival drive, at the animal level, as the basis of current decision making. Energetic reality lays bare the existence of spirit as a dominant guiding force for life, in and beyond the physical body.

What all religious traditions have always held space for, is the existence of a soul, an etheric body that separates from the physical body at death to participate in continued life on new terms, without a physical body. Energetic reality offers the means to experience and explore this realm while still in possession of a physical body.

Robert Monroe was a leader in providing a technology of brain hemispheric synchronization that facilitates such exploration. Carlos Castaneda shared a simpler technology toward the same end, that of intent. The potential that each technology offers is direct experience of one’s soul, on an energetic plane beyond the physical body.

This energetic exploration is a means to knowing, versus simply hoping, that life continues beyond physical life. With this knowing, life on the physical plane is no longer encumbered by the fear of death, that which has led to the dominance of the survival drive at the animal level of our human selves.

Opening to energetic reality also exposes us to the true nature of our interconnectedness with all of life, on and beyond the planet, as we encounter the subtler energetic dimensions of being. With this broader view we realize that our thoughts influence others, spoken or unspoken. We discover that we too are deeply influenced by the silent thoughts of others, as well as the collective world thought patterns and beliefs, that on any given day large numbers of people may feel depressed and hopeless, or invigorated and hopeful, as the collective energy is felt on an energetic level.

Energetic reality is transparent and largely nonverbal. In energetic reality, we easily read the intentions of others, as well as ourselves. In energetic reality, the instincts of the human animal are seen, known, and accepted. In energetic reality, with a more honest awareness in place, the human animal is granted life with embodied consciousness. Certainly, in energetic reality, the negotiation of intimacy in relationship has the potential to become one of deeply profound union.

The ability to heal and be healed in energetic reality is exponentially advanced, as the subtler dimensions of thought and intention, as energetic change agents, are incorporated more fully and fundamentally into treatment protocols. The understanding of disease, as indicative of the status of the soul—perhaps being blocked in its intent, or forging its intent through the creation of physical symptoms—will deepen diagnostic and treatment approaches.

In energetic reality, inter- and intra-dimensional travel and communication, with souls no longer in human form, will vastly conserve the dense energetic reserves of the planet, currently being exploited for dense body, physical travel. Obsession with materialistic accumulation will give way to energetic creativity, with its boundless right-brain potential properly attuned with a left-brained attitude freed of egotistic fixation.

Though it may be difficult to imagine these profound changes, as we near the edge of the narcissistic platform that has embodied our beliefs, the possibilities I present are already being experienced by many. One need only decide, in earnest, to experience the soul directly, in an out-of-body experience in dreaming. As the body goes to sleep, the natural time for the soul’s dominant activity in our lives awakens. With but a little perseverance, one will have experiences beyond belief.

And so, with the Trump Show shattering our beliefs, the ground is clearing, as we reach the edge of narcissism and venture into a whole new world of energetic possibility.

Bon Voyage,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Pulling the Sword from the Lake

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Sword in the lake…

Once upon a time, in the Age of Chivalry, King Arthur pulled his mighty sword, Excalibur, from the stone, assuring his divine right to the throne. This was the age where the princess and queen were protected by the unrequited, unconsummated love of their devoted knights.

Jung discovered that this masculine warrior, who completely dedicates his life to serving his queen, is actually a living part of a woman’s psyche. This animus, as he termed it, is the masculine part of the inherent structure of a woman’s psyche. Typically, however, a woman encounters this inner character as an outer person, projected upon various boys and men in her life, who reflect, unbeknownst to her, her own inner masculine self.

The masculine in woman is reflected in the symbol of the sword. Aside from its protective function, it wields the ability to slice finely apart the nature of reality in the form of left brain thinking and consciousness: rationality, logic, and the power of discrimination in time and space. When a woman retains versus unknowingly disowns her animus via projection, she is in a position to develop and mature the power and ability of her inherent masculine, as well as her natural right brained feminine nature.

Recently, an eight-year-old girl named Saga pulled a 1500-year-old pre-Viking sword from Lake Vidostern in Sweden.* This saga symbolizes modern woman’s owning her own animus power, as she embodies her voice, tempers her emotions, and keeps possession of her clear thinking.

When I watched and listened to Dr. Ford give her testimony, I heard the voice of a young girl accompanied by the mature mind of an educated woman. Her knowledge of brain science was seamless, her articulation flawless. She knows what many a recapitulating woman knows about sexual abuse, the absolute facts of what happened.

Like many others,  she held this truth in well-guarded secrecy for nearly a lifetime. But the traumatized girl-interrupted in her would never let her forget. Though she tried to barricade her way to safety with two sets of front doors she could not be insulated from the power of the truth.

It was to take the rising of her teenage abuser to the heights of the Supreme Court to break her silence. Her truth resonated for many, though many doubt the definiteness of her memory. Having spent the last 30 years treating many women and men abused decades earlier in their lives, I have had the benefit of witnessing the absolute clarity of visceral memory in recapitulation.

Trauma fragments the self as a means to remain viable. Oftentimes the entire experience is lost to memory for many years, until the adult self is sufficiently ready to face and process the experience. Dr. Ford never lost the memory, but her ability to react, to confront, and to speak her truth were frozen deeply in the body of her fifteen-year-old self. Dr. Ford’s testimony before the Senate melted her frozen-in-time reactions to the assault.

This was the true healing moment, the moment of self-unification and restored wholeness. The outcome of the hearing and confirmation process have no bearing on her healing. Speaking her truth out loud freed her voice. It matters not whether she is believed, she is healed. Though there may be more steps for her to take to complete her healing, she is no longer frozen in time, held in  check by fear.

Our world finds itself divided, in deep polarization, with leadership modeling and fueling threatening and hurtful language and action, which certainly generates new ordeals for Dr. Ford, but nothing can erase the bridge she crossed in her deep personal healing.

Her testimony sheds great light on the ordeal of sexuality in adolescence as well. She has shed intimate light on the hidden truth of many a girl’s experience, blindsided by the uncontrolled sexual advance of pubescent boys and men. We are a race who, for all our technological genius, knows nothing of the most powerful energy in our animal selves, sexual energy. Yes, we must protect our boys, but the real truth is that boys need to be protected from being overpowered by their sexual nature, as it floods their immature egos in adolescence.

Sexual emergence, education, and regulation are simply downplayed, avoided, or underestimated in our thoroughly modern culture. This is the reason for mass sexual abuse in all cultures of the world. Dr. Ford has added to the recent mass sharing of the truths that most women have been too frightened to share. And though we may be entering a brief dark age that threatens every woman’s control over her own body, some young girl is preparing, right now, to take the human race forward, as Ms. Saga’s lifting of the sword portends.

The key for the rising feminine was modeled by Dr. Ford. Yes, the young girl still resides inside—we hear her voice—but her innocence is liberated and protected by her mature adult mind. She presents with clarity, innocence, and knowledge. She needn’t raise her voice; her calm demeanor resonates deeply with all who seek the truth.

In the end, it’s only the truth that matters. It’s the only way we can square with our spirit, the essence of real healing. Power can push it away, but power that ignores the truth is but a castle in the sand.

I look forward to the emergence of the steady feminine hand upon the sword, in both women and men. Watch carefully, and patiently. It is the real saga unfolding before us. I extend pure love to both Christine and Brett, integral parts of our evolving saga.

Honoring the rising Saga,

Chuck

*https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45753455