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Chuck’s Place: Exercising The Power Of The Second Attention

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The power of the second attention…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

The shamans of ancient Mexico called the ability to access and influence reality at a subtle energetic level, the exercise of power at the level of the second attention. This is in contrast to the first attention, the province of using physical energy in the solid world of everyday life.

By simply thinking, we engage the second attention. Thought conjures the subtle energy of imagination, which generates a blueprint that then manifests as images in action, which influence the physical dimension of reality through the law of attraction.

Thought can also be directed to travel telepathically and to be subliminally received by someone whom we intend to be influenced by it. Setting a healing intent, or praying for someone, are examples of exercising this power of the second attention.

These simple examples of exercising the power of the second attention deepen as one learns of the existence of the astral dimension, where souls, in their energy body form, intermingle in what is called dreaming.

When the physical body goes into the deep regeneration of sleep, one’s energy body, or soul, is freed from its mooring within the physical body to travel, in dreaming, into the astral dimension of reality. The astral region is populated by visiting energy bodies of humans currently in physical form, as well as by those currently not in human form. Bob Monroe crafted this affirmation for astral travelers so as to ensure safety and protection:

I deeply desire the help and cooperation, the assistance, the understanding of those individuals whose wisdom, development and experience are equal to or greater than my own. I ask their guidance and protection from any influence or any source that might provide me with less than my stated desires.

The energetic modus operandi of the astral region is thought. Thus, if I intend to fly in a dream, I simply state ‘fly now’ and off I go. If my mind, however, is in its first attention perspective when dreaming, I will attempt to fly by flapping my arms and jumping up like a bird, to no avail.

Similarly, if I am in my first attention in a dream and consciously attempt to walk, as I do in waking life, I will experience tremendous weight and inertia as I stumble forward. Actually, this experience is a moment where I might be prompted to wake up to my second attention, as the thought might occur in the first attention that, “This situation is impossible. Of course it is, I’m in a dream!”

From this awakening realization I can simply command where I want to be, and be there in an instant. The trick is to stay in the astral region of dreaming and not wake up to the physical body and the first attention of Newtonian physics. To develop second attention awareness in dreaming, set the intent to wake up to it before you go off to sleep. Be patient as you seek to develop your astral prowess.

Outwardly, the world has truly woken up to, and become pervasively enthralled with, exercising the power of the second attention in daily life, the normal province of the first attention. The use of affirmations to manifest one’s desires is widespread. The caution here is to be sure that what one asks for is truly in alignment with one’s high Spirit. (See my blog: Don’t Forget To Ask If It’s Right for a fuller discussion of this point).

Our world is being challenged now with ideologies—thoughts—that state that if facts don’t support their contentions then the facts are false. The human race has become extremely polarized by thoughts that have manifested alternative realities, based on differing belief systems around the globe. The power of the second attention can be commandeered for egocentric and evil intentions, as well as for the good of the planet.

To protect oneself from the power of nefarious influencers, retreat to the sanctity of the heart, where the scales of justice will always tell the truth. Include a positive affirmation, such as Bob Monroe’s, to be fully present to observe and learn but still safe and protected from negative influences.

Intend to be personally responsible with the power of thought at the center of the second attention.

And, last but not least, intend always for the greater good, joining ranks with the evolutionary energy of love. Now that’s worthy of all our attention!

First and Second Attention on love,
Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Earth’s Field Of Dreams

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Dream love…
– Artwork © 2022 Jan Ketchel

Our nighttime dreams are actually evening meditations. As the senses of the body become passive in sleep, our consciousness is freed to meet with our teachers and guides who reside in the subtler dimensions of our being. Dreams and waking meditations are the portals to communion with our own High Spirit.

When we return from our nightly spirit consultations, we abruptly wake up to our physical reality, as the ego quickly begins anticipating its day. If we are able to download the contents of our dream journeys, we are able to contemplate their messages and benefit from their guidance.

It always helps to write them down. It is amazing how a dream, clearly remembered in the morning, drops from memory as we move through our day. Themes that are encountered in the subtler dimension of the dream take physical form as the day progresses. The subtle energy of dreaming creates the mental blueprint that deeply influences the events and attitudes we will assume in waking life.

Collective dreams are the dreams of Mother Earth as she interacts with the guides and higher self of her own Earth being. Human beings collectively comprise the ego consciousness of Mother Earth. Human waking behavior and climactic events are the physical downloads and expressions of her subtle dreams.

Covid-19 was an enactment of one of Mother Earth’s subtle dreams. That dream completely disrupted human behavior. For a while a united world raced to protect itself from that serious viral infection. Then the world split into opposing factions, unable to agree upon vaccines, masks, or whether the threat was even that real.

The covid dream confronted human beings with an abrupt threat to individual and collective survival. The latent Spirit intent was to raise human spirituality to face the truth and be willing to act in alignment with it. That dream had a minimal impact on human unity, but a new dream was needed to further the cause.

In came the Russian attack of Ukraine dream. Almost overnight the covid dream ended. Even the Freedom Convoy arrived at the outskirts of Washington, DC without a cause, as most mandates have disappeared!

The Russian/Ukraine dream is Mother Earth’s latest dream, where even the potential nightmare of nuclear holocaust has been activated. The collective reaction of the world to this onslaught has brought a much higher level of human consensus to the world stage.

This includes the welcoming of migrants and the willingness to suffer and sacrifice to shut down a behavior that is rooted in untruths and which threatens the innocent people of Ukraine, as well as the overall stability of the world.

Interestingly, it appears that Putin’s strength rests upon his export of oil. Will the world completely shun Russia’s oil to shut down this invasion? This is being contemplated right now. Is the world ready for such sacrifice?

I ponder Mother Earth’s higher self’s intent in this dream. Truth, unity, and sacrifice are key ingredients. Yet, the latent effect of shutting off the oil might be the development of a new dream, of seriously going green, a major key to Mother Earth’s survival. We will see how this dream advances.

Mother Earth’s next dream will be the karma of the outcome of this current dream. Rest assured that whatever next dream appears upon our Earthly field of dreams, it comes imbued to the brim with Spirit intent! And that intent is love, regardless of the challenging dreams we must be shaped by to get there.

Just love,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Thinking Outside the Brain

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Looking toward the heavens, and all that we are…
– Photo by Chuck Ketchel

What happens to the thinking mind of ‘I‘ when the brain dies? Modern neuroscience is in its heyday as it penetrates the biology, chemistry and neurocircuitry of the brain, unraveling the material wonder of mental processing. But, if death is truly not lights out, wherein lies this mental continuity in the soul beyond physical life?

Might it be, as esoteric experience suggests, that the physical body is actually an avatar of the soul? Though the physical brain functions as a self-regulating external hard drive, could it be that the more subtle brain of the soul is the true command center of the physical body?

Elmer Green spent seven intense years working with his wife Alyce in her journey through Alzheimer’s disease. Her physical brain deteriorated to the point of her inability to recall her familial relations. At times, she could become extremely paranoid and combative with her loving husband and professional collaborator of fifty years.

Elmer hypothesized that, due to the brain’s deterioration, the subtle wiring from the physical body to the soul was compromised. This connection is critical to memory, orientation and physical functioning. In esoteric knowing, physical death occurs when the cords between the physical body and the soul snap.

Just as the cutting of the human umbilical cord launches the newborn baby into separate life, as its symbiotic tie to mother physically ends, the soul is freed into independent life at the time of physical death. When the cord between the soul and the physical body is severed at death, the soul, freed from its preoccupation with the workings of a physical body, must adjust to its new milieu and come on line, or be born, to a new orientation in a subtler dimension.

Elmer reasoned that Alyce, in Alzheimer’s, was floundering on the astral plane, as her mental processes were no longer attuned to her physical senses. We all experience this kind of mental state in sleep, as we encounter, at times, bizarre circumstances in dreaming. Lucid dreaming and out-of-body exploration present opportunities for mind to become familiar and comfortable in the subtler dimensions of life.

Dreaming is a natural time for the soul to disengage from the physical body, as it visits more subtle dimensions of reality. The difference in dreaming is that the soul remains attached to the sleeping body, which it reunites with upon awakening, to tackle another day in waking life.

Elmer incessantly grounded Alyce, reading her profoundly esoteric books to provide her with an orientation, or map, to the kinds of territories and encounters she was encountering on the astral plane. At times she was able to come out of her deep disorientation and speak quite eloquently and coherently of her experiences, as well as evidence a profound connection to their life together on earth.

Elmer experienced her soul literally moulding the clay of her brain to function at extremely high levels for brief periods of time. I once had the experience of Jan physically transmogrify into Jeanne’s physical form during a channeling session, with that same intent. Like a scene out of the movie Ghost, we communicated.

Elmer was delighted when Alyce came fully on line in her soul body before she died in her physical form. This enabled Alyce to skip over the sojourn, however brief, in Hades, that departing souls traverse as they reconcile with their life just lived and spend time in semi-conscious replenishment, before waking up and becoming oriented to new life. Alyce went directly to the light.

Perhaps, some day, nursing homes may be seen as valuable in-between stations for preparing departing souls for the definitive journey ahead in infinity. Too often, caretakers and family interpret a resident’s interactions with the dead as hallucinations, generated by a deteriorating brain, versus valid interactions with souls on the next subtle plane.

Frederick Myers, cofounder of the Society for Psychical Research in London, died in 1901 and spent the next 40 plus years communicating to several psychics of his continued exploration of the evolution of the soul in infinity. Myers confirmed that the mind is indeed located in the soul, and that it psychokinetically controls the physical body during human life. Myers went on to elucidate further refinements to the soul, as it traverses seven planes of existence on its journey to the light and beyond.

Thus, thinking, indeed, has a relationship with the physical brain, as body and soul are intimately entwined during physical life. However, who you are, and your ability to think, transcend life in the body. Indeed, we are more than our physical body.

Thinking beyond the body,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Remembering Is Everything

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Time to take a stroll down memory lane?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

In a separate reality, I was in a new school, small and simple. It was the first day of school. Another student and I were called to stand in the front of the class. We were being recognized for the papers we had written from a summer assignment. I was amazed, as the topic was science or engineering, something I hardly felt knowledgeable in.

I remembered to remember that my task was to remember. Remember people’s names, remember the layout of the school, how to get to the lunchroom, where to sit, the protocols around being served and eating. I was painfully shy, not wanting to stand out by making mistakes. The imperative was clear—remember everything so that you can smoothly fit in and navigate the school.

The evening before this dream journey I was back at The Training for Living Institute, remembering being hired as a promising prospect, though still a teenager. The layout began to materialize, the large pop art rendition of the TFL logo painted on the wall, encircled in bright colors. The spacious outer reception area with modern, comfortable chairs.

Amazingly, the names of my colleagues began to materialize as my focus opened the Akashic record of this earlier lifescape. My school dream was validating the importance of remembering, the key to retrieving all of what we are. What really is the challenge of remembering? And why do we ‘forget’ to begin with?

Children often remember their families from a prior life. Parents must quickly talk them out of it, lest they be identified for medication assessment. The truth is, however, that children do go on to forget because the main attraction is the life they are currently in, not past lives lived.

Remembering a past life is as valuable as an astrological chart. It explains  the influence of indelible prior experiences and predicts future possibilities, but ultimately the action is in the free will choices of the current life.

We do not continue a prior life; we take up the issue of a prior life in a totally new context. We will meet incomplete challenges, which we might complete in this life. Future life will pick it up from there. Perhaps a life is an opportunity to pay forward the evolution of a greater life. And so, we forget past lives so that they don’t interfere with our current opportunities.

Of course, from the perspective of our greater wholeness in infinity, indeed, we must ultimately claim all of our lives. We must be able to handle the emotion of that integration as we bring together all of our varied adventures in infinity. This level of Enlightenment is generally the challenge upon leaving this life.

When the challenge is at this level of consolidation of our wholeness, we must be capable of radical acceptance of everything. This can only be accomplished with the most refined level of love for everyone and everything—with total equanimity. Until we are ready to love at this level, many memories must be anesthetized.

In trauma, the contents of an experience are separated from consciousness to protect the stability of the personality. These ‘forgotten’ experiences nonetheless include a portion of our vital energy. Thus, loss of memory, in this case, is loss of self.

Reliving a forgotten memory through recapitulation is a soul retrieval process that restores one’s lost vital energy. Key to this restoration is the ability to experience, release, and neutralize the emotions bound to the memory. The complete acceptance of self and other, as well as the circumstances of the memory, requires achieving the refined love of equanimity. If we can’t love every experience we have ever had, we are rejecting a part of our truth.

Morality has no value in acceptance. All that happened is valid because it happened. If we remain judgmental, we are not fully accepting of a part of ourselves and a part of our history. Our future lives will continue to reflect future attempts to reach total acceptance, as we relive new permutations of our unaccepted themes.

Thus, in the context of a current life, remembering the fullness of this life is essential to fully achieving the goal of the life one is in—to resolve the major theme and core issue of this life.

From the context of our greater Soul, in infinity, wholeness requires the remembering of all the lives, all the characters, all the partners and parents, all the loves, all the losses, all the supposed sins—all with total radical acceptance and total loving equanimity.

At the greater Soul level of acceptance, we must be ready for the big bang encounter with our fuller operating system, our multi-lived selves, at the time of transition into infinity. This might require extended time in purgatory bardos, as we slowly complete our cosmic recapitulation, resolving all of our lives and all of our issues. Remembering is the ticket to consolidation of our greater wholeness.

The order of challenge is to first remember and accept everything from the life we are in. With the wholeness of our current life achieved, it’s far easier, in infinity, to remember and accept every life lived. With this consolidation of cosmic Self, perhaps we approach the ultimate memory of oneness, with Source, the single being of everything and from which we all come.

Remembering to remember,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: The Day of Transition

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The unrenovated shadow self…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

I spent last night in dreams of renovation. I awoke several times in the night, my body feeling the physical download of great effort. The house is an older home, with good bones, purchased from people of positive intent, who never got to the renovation of the back half of the house. Under their care it remained a potentiality, dark and unexplored.

The project is huge, the materials are modest and the effort is great. There is no sense of inflated expansion, but the expansion is solid and will serve the needs of all who will inhabit it.

Awakening to the headlines of today, legitimacy is being granted, despite reservation. The momentum of change is fully apparent. The country has spoken and chosen a new dream. The dream we have been living challenged us to take responsibility for our future dream. It truly became necessary to consent to the reality we would live in.

Consciousness, as expressed through the collective ego, has risen beyond the stage of pure narcissism to address the true needs of the whole. This has been a developmental process of necessity.

First, the purely self-serving ego needed to be lived and given full rein, so that the impact upon world survival could be felt and consciously assessed. All of the ego’s manipulative machinations had to be fully lived and experienced before it could acquiesce to a higher cause, the welfare of the greater whole. Though leaders mirror this ego, they merely reflect the internal process of us all.

We have all encountered the impact of allowing the desire body to rule the ego. The thrill of that ride, the bliss of excess, is a legitimate dream, but it burns out quickly through its unbridled appetite, leaving us all exhausted. We have now chosen continuance and evolution over the fascination of Armageddon. We know now that we can indeed go out in a blaze of glory that we have caused, but we have chosen not to exercise that option.

We have learned, as well, that the repressed in all of us can emerge with a self-destructive vengeance. We’ve all witnessed it acting out. To regain balance, we must responsibly find a life for all that we desire.

The Earth teaches us to move away from exploiting her bounty. We must follow her example. The future of desire is to turn this human spirit of manifest destiny to exploration of the energy body, away from rampant ego desires to the world of spirit and out-of-body travel and all that it offers. At this subtle level of the Soul, thought alone is the fuel. How’s that for clean energy!

As my dream portends, the dark unknown half of the house is ready for discovery and renovation. Despite the labor involved, it promises to solidly house all that we are. We must all begin with the self.

Take up the challenge of the repressed and the desired within the self. Bring light into the darkness. Be conservative yet daring. The time of transition has arrived.

In gratitude, and with love to all,

Chuck