Tag Archives: dispersion

Chuck’s Place: Managing The Heat Of Passion

Flare up of passion... - Photo by Chuck Ketchel
Flare up of passion…
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

Emotion, red hot feeling, is the heat of passion. Whether it be passion in the form of burning sexual desire, seething frustration, or boiling rage, the energy of passion is intense and blood red.

The urging of this volatile energy to escape its containment often results in explosive actions that overwhelm the environment like a loud shock of thunder. Ever burning sexual desire can obliterate true union if its urgency of release cannot be titrated to genuinely meet and connect with another.

Much of modern psychology is dedicated to helping the ego properly channel and regulate these deeply instinctual passions in everyday life. The home base of these passions, though experienced in the body, lies deeply within the unconscious mind. Ego is not the home of passion; ego is civilized. Ego in a passionate state is either channeling a passion or is possessed by one.

Jung suggested, one hundred years ago, when we experience a passionate emotion that we pause, contain it, and ask it to present itself as an image in the psyche. Once the image presents, the ego can interact with it in an active imagination dialogue that gives voice to the image and allows the ego to mediate a solution.

The other morning, as I stepped out to feed the birds, I discovered snow and ice. I decided to snow blow, putting my brand new, bright red Ariens snowblower to the test. Before I started, I sat down to read a few pages of Going Native by Tom Harmer, a scene where he was being schooled by a shaman to take off and dry the distributor cap to a flooded engine on a tractor that was failing to start. Then I went down to the garage to start my snowblower.

It refused to turn over! Within minutes it too was flooded, but this machine has no distributor cap! I could feel the frustration rising in me, but after 15 minutes realized I had to let go. I could not make the driveway and walkway safe for others. I had to go to work.

Arriving at work, my frustration had turned to dejection. I was in no shape to greet my first client. Still seized with emotion, I decided to use the I Ching to provide me with an image, as Jung suggested, to objectify my dilemma. I received hexagram #59, Dispersion, with a nine in the sixth place, which turns into hexagram #29, The Abysmal.

The image for Dispersion is that of the wind blowing over water, breaking up and dissolving any hardness accumulated in the water. The guidance offered was gentleness that takes the ego off the hook for failure. The shamans would say, “suspend judgment.”

The nine in the sixth place states: “He dissolves his blood. Departing, keeping at a distance, going out, is without blame.” I had, in fact, dissolved the accumulated blood red frustrated state by departing, going out, and keeping at a distance from my Ariens!

The I Ching then takes me down into the ravine of the Abysmal, a doubling of the trigram water: a yang line caught between two yin lines, water trapped deep in a ravine. The yang line is creative, a masculine planner now manifesting in the world of yin, the earth.

In the ravine... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
In the ravine…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Water, in the Chinese symbology, is masculine, as its dynamic movement flows like a river. The rock walls of the ravine are feminine, solid earth that contains and gives form to the water. The secret solution for the masculine energy in the Abysmal is to allow for the slow accumulation of water in the ravine where once it reaches a certain level will naturally resume its flow.

Thus, patience is called for, not pressing forward at all costs. In my case, this meant not only letting go and walking away, as I did because I was out of time, allowing my own energy to disperse, but also allowing the gasoline to slowly disperse as it naturally will, and reading the manual—also an act of patience!—so that next time I get the choke setting correct when I fire up my mighty Ariens!

The clarity, relief, and readjustment of inner relation with my passionate unconscious, through engagement with this process of imagery with the I Ching, allowed me to receive my first client with utter calm.

Taking it slow and easy,

Chuck

#723 Facing the Dispersion

Jan Ketchel channeling Jeanne Marie Ketchel

Dear Jeanne,
What message of guidance do you offer us now?

This is a time of great culmination and dispersion. Imagine waves at sea, with no sight of land but far from any shore, slapping into each other, rising up in collision and confrontation, and yet there is little to do as a result of this clash but to sink back down into the great wide ocean once again. Such is the time of now, the time of culmination and dispersion, yet what is the deeper meaning?

Beyond returning to the unconscious, the great wide ocean of discontent, all of your experiences are meaningful for the moment, and far beyond as well.

All are challenged to take not only meaning from the events in life but to learn the lessons about the self those events send swirling up into awareness. The deep sea that does tend to the earth and its inhabitants in so many ways does also keep hidden the deeper meanings of life, evolutionary or otherwise.

I do not mean to confuse or speak only in metaphorical or allegorical terms, for I do not intend wasting words. I seek to expand awareness, to prod you, My Dear Readers, awake; to ask you to use your intuition and knowing to guide yourself more steadily through life—so bear with me. Who can you rely on to offer real advice? In truth, you must resort to the self, for only the self knows what lies deep inside you. You must, if you are to evolve, find the means of allowing the self to express, to be expressed and fully known, both inside and outside the self.

This inner process requires a good dose of humility, a large portion of innocence, and the ability—learned, practiced or innate—to trust that you can allow the energy inside you to guide you, as the waves upon the sea, to the point of culmination and dispersion.

It is only through calling up the deeper truths of the self, often by force, that the spreading of them will occur. In forcing the self to face the deeply sunken treasures of truth, long buried or otherwise hidden, the next step in personal growth may have a chance.

That next step is facing the dispersion I speak of. To face this kind of dispersion requires affording the self the deepest respect, first of all. Only with deep respect for the self will you be able to take seriously all that shoots forth and falls around you as your inner and outer waves crash and disperse.

In honesty must your self-respect be guided to acceptance of all that lies floating about on the waters that are your life. You see, you are but nature itself, like the ocean, with things seen on the surface and things hidden below, even to the very bottom and beyond, in the muck that lies far beyond normal reach. You are nature itself and as such you have within you the same forces that nature bears. These include unknown forces that emerge when you least expect them, forces that will shake you awake and ask you to humbly step back, to look at your life in all its broken bits and pieces floating like debris upon the ocean top. These forces ask you to accept that indeed these doings are honestly my own, and then to allow this humble self to accept the responsibility for not just picking up the pieces and putting them away. No, the real process of clean up after a storm is to examine how this storm happened, whether it was conscious or unconscious, and to use those fragments of self to build a new more naturally acceptable self.

All humans are innocent beings at the core. All fear life, as much as they fear death, yet do they too easily elect to pretend that neither is that important. Caught in an alternate reality of sameness, they lose sight of the truth of life. They forget they are the ocean and the moon and stars alike. They forget they are innocent beings with the forces of nature rocking inside them. They quell and soothe this true nature. They pretend it could not possibly exist, that what they experience could not be true. “How could this happen?” they ask. “This could not happen to me!” they cry. “What did I do to deserve this?” they wonder.

In truth, if you look at your life as the ocean itself you may be able to better understand the reflection of self as nature. If you prefer, look to the sky, for it too is like the ocean. One lies above and one below, yet do they offer the same opportunities for growth. They offer the opportunity to look beyond what you see before your frightened eyes. They ask you to pierce the surface of your world and explore what lies beyond.

My advice for you, My Dear Ones, is to continue piercing your own world. Do not accept it simply because it presents itself in one form or image. Look at your life and remind yourself that though this is my life at this moment, it is but the surface that I must break through. I must use the forces of nature inside me to explore my inner world for guidance but also for direction.

One must be ready to undertake the shattered bits and pieces of flotsam and jetsam that float upon the ocean of life as indeed that which is laid before the self to examine. This is indeed a time of energetic self-examination. If you take a moment to study the self you may find that your culmination has already occurred. It may have happened years ago when you least expected it and since then you have been trying to put the pieces together again, in the same way, attempting to re-form an old image. However, that is not possible. The only thing to do now is to accept that a new world, a new self is called for. A new self must be prepared now.

A new life must be created from the dispersed self. But be sure to keep in mind also that this is the opportunity you have waited for, the moment of decision you have longed for. Do not miss it this time. Do yourself the honor of doing it differently!

Please feel free to post comments or respond to this message from Jeanne in the post/read comments section below.

Fondly and innocently offered.

#720 Chuck’s Place: Huan

I stood upon the deck in the early morning and observed the elements. The wind was quite prominent, separating the dry leaves from the trees. “I Ching,” I ask, “what is the guidance at this moment?” The answer: Hexagram #59. Huan/Dispersion [Dissolution]

This hexagram is built by the trigram Sun, which represents wind, over the trigram K’an, which represents water. The wind gently disperses the water, in ripples upon the surface. The wind also takes the leaves from the trees and disperses them upon the earth. Elements that once gathered together in the spring to produce discrete forms in flowers and trees are now dispersed, dissolved and returned to a greater unity of elements out of which new life will eventually come.

In human nature our trees and flowers are our attitudes that guide and direct our decisions, behaviors, relationships, and undertakings. To form these attitudes we gather our energy together in definite ways to direct our lives. But in the time of Huan we are asked to allow for dissolution of rigid beliefs or attitudes that have guided our actions but may in turn have created divisiveness, prejudice, and the setting of veils within the self or within relationships.

Huan calls for a deeper unity, a greater communion with spirit, a connection that transcends divisive egotism, a dissolution into pure truth. Only from this place can the raw materials of life gather together again to bring forth change and new life.

In this reading, two lines were highlighted for specific attention: the yin lines in the first and third places of the lower trigram K’an. The yin line in the first place states:

He brings help with the strength of a horse.

Good fortune.

Being the first line of the hexagram the importance of the time of the beginning is emphasized. The guidance here is to bring attention to the divisive forces that would thwart any effort to change, let go, or release a long held or staunchly held position. Beware that the attitude in question might act as a repressive force upon any attempt at reflection. It might reassert itself at the first sign of our attempt to soften, as we honestly and objectively contemplate our position. We are advised to bring the energy, the strength of a horse, to bear at the beginning of our contemplative process. Stay with it. For example, when we begin to meditate we are assailed by the thoughts of the conjuring mind. Often this can have the effect of weakening our resolve and we abandon the effort. If we can remain nonjudgmental and gently bring ourselves back to our intended focus, over time we will arrive at a place of deeper meditation. The strength of the horse to stay the course in the beginning is crucial to ultimate success.

The yin line in the third place offers this guidance:

He dissolves his self. No remorse.

This guidance is emphatic that we go beyond the felt personal needs of the self and ask: What is truly right in this situation? What is the truth, not my personal truth, but objective truth? This process requires a real dissolution of the prejudices of the needy personal self. This dissolution opens up a direct line to spirit, as the ego throws its intent on spirit truth.

If we follow the guidance of these two energized yin lines this hexagram will shift to a future state, depicted by hexagram # 9. Hsiao Ch’u. In this future hexagram the upper trigram for wind remains constant, but the two charged yin lines below become yang lines, giving rise to Ch’ien, the trigram for heaven. Hence, we have the image of wind driving across heaven.

This hexagram is comprised of five yang lines with one yin line in the middle, which acts as a restraining force upon the preponderant yang energy. Thus we have the English translation of Hsiao Ch’u, The Taming Power of the Small. Of what power really has the wind in relation to heaven? Yes, it might bring the clouds together, but can it make it rain? The rain comes in its own time, completely independent of the wind.

Viewing this hexagram as the outcome of the unique set of circumstances from which it came, Huan, the counsel here is that the attitude we need to dissolve is quite strong, in fact it has the potent energy of five yang lines grouped together versus one weak yin line. That yin line, at best, can have a restraining influence upon the yang energy but is not in a position to overtake or dissolve it. We must be content with restraining our controlling attitude, as we have not yet the power to release its grip upon us. The only thing we can do at this time is to be patient and content to bear this tension. This is not the time for bold moves. Nonetheless we shouldn’t underestimate the value and necessity of being able to restrain ourselves.

With patience and gentleness towards ourselves, as we suspend judgment and slow down, we can be assured that the gathering clouds will eventually release the rains that will have the power to disperse and break apart that which requires dissolution. This is Hsiao Ch’u, The Taming Power of the Small. The patient act of restraining ultimately completes Huan/Dispersion [Dissolution]. Don’t underestimate it!

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

Until we meet again,
Chuck