Tag Archives: duality

Chuck’s Place: The Impact Of Faith Upon The Dual Mind

Faith & Desire fuel manifestation…
-Artwork © 2025 Jan Ketchel

Thomson Jay Hudson’s 1893 publication of The Law Of Psychic Phenomena introduced an epochal distinction between the thinking of the conscious and subconscious minds. In a nutshell, the conscious mind is capable of a reasoning that can think outside the box whereas the subconscious mind never goes outside the box of its given, beginning premise.

Thus, for example, although all cloudy signs might suggest the coming of a rainstorm, the conscious mind might remain open to the possibility of a sunny day. In contrast, if the subconscious mind is told that the body has a cold, it will employ, without question, all its manifesting power to generate that state of illness in the body.

The subconscious mind takes, as absolute fact, what it is told—or the suggestions it is given, consciously or unconsciously—by the conscious mind. In contrast, the conscious mind is capable of seeing probabilities, but also possibilities, for outcomes that lie beyond a given premise.

Tell the subconscious mind that you are inadequate and it will package that suggestion, without contradiction, into a habit that becomes the overriding sense of self-definition that influences enduring moods, physical expression, social relationships and enduring beliefs about the self.

On the other hand, the conscious mind, while heavily under the impact of a negative belief, still has the possibility to imagine or believe that it can change, envisioning an adequate, if not thriving, sense of self. The conscious mind has the ability to exercise its will to logically create, change, or petition the subconscious mind to manifest a new possibility.

While the conscious mind has the freedom to assert life in new directions, the subconscious mind must contend with the power of the suggestions it receives from its evolutionary history, most intensely expressed through instinctive or hereditary reactions.

Despite the power of these reactions, as reflected in the archetypes of the collective unconscious, the subconscious mind does remain attuned to new suggestions issued from our conscious thoughts and intentions. The challenge for the conscious mind is to make positive suggestions for the greater good of self, and the world, rather than for the greater good of the ego, or lower desires within the self.

This is the greatest challenge for the modern world: Do I intend a world for the greater fulfillment of my own desires alone, or for the greater good of the entire world?

The dual mind reflects the human ability to both determine what is best and to fully manifest it into life. On the one side, the conscious mind has access to unlimited possibilities; on the other, the subconscious mind has access to the knowhow and substance to bring to life its accepted suggestion.

The overarching necessity for the conscious mind to deliver a successful suggestion to the subconscious mind is faith. Divorce faith, in this definition, from any spiritual association. I define faith here as acknowledging the possibility, despite all logical argument, that anything is possible.

That possibility alone is the hypothesis for any experiment. Scientific method asks us to be open to test any possibility. The methodology, in the case of suggestions to the subconscious mind, is to suspend judgment and imagine an outcome one desires. Desire is the motive power of suggestion. Desire attracts like manifestation.

If fear has been an old dominant experience in my life, my desired new outcome may be to exhibit a pervasive sense of courage. The suggestion I state is, “I Am Courage.” I visualize myself calm and confident in previously challenging circumstances. Coupled with imagination and positive feelings, I state my suggestion often, sometimes parrotlike, but always truly embodying the confidence of the intention.

As always, we must remind the conscious mind that its role is to suggest, not enact. When it delivers its suggestion to the subconscious mind, it must truly turn over control to the powers of the subconscious mind to manifest. The only job for the conscious mind is to remain persevering in its practice of the stating of its suggestion, feeling its desire, and imagining its materialization.

It often happens that the path the subconscious mind chooses brings synchronicities into our lives, which invite conscious realization and spur action toward the ultimate goal. However, the creative process and timetable of enactment are totally in the hands of the subconscious mind. Hands off!

The little bit of faith that the conscious mind requires, the faith that anything is possible, provides the legitimacy to experiment with the manifesting powers of the dual mind.

Set up your own experiments. See what happens! You won’t be disappointed.

Just a little bit of faith,
Chuck

Chuck’s Place: Love And Hate

Reconciliation of Opposites…
-Artwork © 2023 Jan Ketchel

Don Juan Matus explained to Carlos Castaneda that, yes, our world is a world of separate objects. However, beneath that world of separateness, we are all in a state of one interconnected energy. In that state of oneness, love is the energy of cohesion, that which holds together and welcomes all of its neighbors.

Don Juan also explained that we live in a predatory universe. Indeed, all life feeds upon life, and yet, at a soul level, energetic life is never lost, it merely changes form.

Survival, in our separate human form state, requires an instant ability to judge safety and danger. That which we judge to be dangerous we come to hate. Hate is the emotion that allows us to dehumanize and destroy that which we judge to be different and threatening to our survival.

Oneness and separateness are a pair of opposites that constitute a core challenge to life in human form. It all begins with the symbiotic oneness of mother and embryonic fetus, in pregnancy, that ends in the separation of the one into two distinct beings at birth. The challenge to become a fully realized separate being, who can open to the oneness of love, is the art of human life.

We are drawn to relationship in a quest to reunite with our lost oneness. Union is driven by the natural attraction of opposites for each other. This is love in energetic motion. When these opposites unite there is frequently a honeymoon phase, where opposites relish the relief and ecstasy of restored oneness.

However, as relationships progress, one’s separate, differentiated self reemerges and finds itself in opposition with its soulmate. This reemergence frequently leads to competition and opposition of viewpoints in the relationship. The couple is then challenged to make room for their differences in the wholeness of their relationship. Far too often, bearing the tension of these unreconciled opposites results in the solution to hate one’s partner and end the relationship.

The solution of hate, devaluation, and demonization of the other is the frequent outcome of attempting to bear the extraordinary tension of differences necessary to reach a reconciling of opposites. This is evident in the wars that plague our world. The underlying energetic imperative to embrace all parts and peoples of the world in the oneness that we truly are is the evolutionary and karmic challenge of our time.

Beneath the opposites of love and hate is the oneness and separation phases of human and cosmic evolution. The separatist, hateful stage of human interaction must ultimately acquiesce to the greater harmony and love of energetic reality, which, like day turning into night, will naturally reassert itself.

As we live through this stage of human evolution, which emphasizes separateness and hate in human relations, may we bear its tension and find the path that will lead us to our underlying wholeness, with renewed balance. This is the path where love and hate meet in a union that makes room for all.

Bearing the tension of love and hate,
Chuck

Soulbyte for Tuesday December 5, 2023

-Artwork © 2023 Jan Ketchel

Stay connected to your intent to discover meaning and purpose in life, for that is what makes life interesting, the desire to know, to understand, to question reality. Without a desire for knowledge each day becomes like the next, but a seeker’s day is full of wonder and every experience is full of wonder too. At the same time, pay attention to the physical reality of life, for to ignore the physical needs and desires is to miss out on the grand experiment of life on earth and the purpose and meaning of physical life, as well as spiritual life. Being human is as wondrous as being a spirit. Maintain balance between the two, even as you seek something greater beyond that duality, for everything is meaningful.

Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Chuck’s Place: Reconciliation Of Mind

Free your wings!
-Artwork © 2023 Jan Ketchel

We are all ultimately One, but the structure of this world that we live in is one of separate objects, with distinct differences.

Christian Science suggests we link our consciousness with our core identity, that perfect Oneness, whereby healing the illusion of disease in a non-existent, separate physical body.

Hindu philosophy calls this illusion of separateness maya. Maya spins and directs lila, the creative divine play that results in the current world drama that we personally experience as the fixed reality of our world. To become enlightened, one must fully engage in the current play yet be aware of the limitations of its illusory solidity, and the fact of its impermanence. That’s what is meant by non-attachment.

The shamans of ancient Mexico call assuming this role of non-attachment stalking. In stalking, we fully embody the character we intend to become, sometimes even temporarily forgetting our true essence as energetic beings when we do so. From a shamanic perspective, our world is generated by fixating our consciousness upon a program that assembles our awareness to perceive a world of distinct solid objects.

Carlos Castaneda pointed out that it is sheer magic to be able to conjure this solid world. He called human beings magical beings because of their ability to so fixate their awareness as to generate such a magical event. However, he truly lamented how this single assemblage point of  awareness had become the sole fixation of human consciousness. We have forgotten that we are indeed magical beings capable of unlimited possibilities.

In my time in Carlos Castaneda’s world, I once observed him personally demonstrate a physical movement to break this fixation of limited awareness. He was a short man. He turned his back to us, performing a kind of shoulder roll.

He keenly stated that we are magical beings whose wings have been clipped. With that he urged us to literally free our wings, demonstrating with a movement initiated from the wing itself; engaging the fullness of the entire back rather than a shallow roll of the shoulder. I saw the profound movement of the depth of his wing.

It’s a simple movement. Imagine the wing. Feel an impulse to move it. Be led by it.

The maya of the human mind is one of duality. We appear to have two distinct minds. That is the divine lila of life as it is played out in the current fixation of the human form. These two minds are the ego and the subconscious. The dance between these two minds is our true inner soulmate relationship in this life, replete with all the agonies and ecstasies of human relationship.

The ego is our objective, reasoning mind. The ego is the seat of consciousness. The ego greatly identifies with life in its physical body. The ego is the home of personal identity; the ego says, “I am.” The ego exercises the directive power of free will, choice, and decision making. The ego is charged with the responsibility of leadership in its human life.

The subconscious is the home of total memory. Every moment of our life is recorded there. While the ego may retain some memory, the subconscious records it all. During recapitulation we experience the relationship of ego and subconscious, as the consciousness of now is reconciled with the full experience of the past.

The subconscious operates through intuition. The subconscious is the remote viewer that can travel way beyond the confines of the physical body and observe events on the other side of the world, or in the cosmos. The subconscious has access to the Akashic records, the collective unconscious history and accrued knowledge of our species.

The subconscious is the seat of telepathy; it receives and can read the thoughts of others. The subconscious runs all the operations of the physical body. The subconscious houses the instincts and is the home of  emotions.

The subconscious is our magical mind. It does not reason; its modus operandi is suggestion. Whatever suggestion it receives, it will fully bring to life. With its vast tools and resources, the subconscious can manifest, to the best of its ability, any suggestion it decides to adopt.

Unknown to us, the ego and the subconscious constantly work in tandem. Thoughts from the ego become directive suggestions to the subconscious, which then turn into a set of habits that automatically control our lives.

The subconscious is also quite receptive to the suggestions of others. We may notice our attitudes, moods and behaviors greatly impacted by our interactions with others. This may largely be the suggestive influence of someone else’s energy upon our subconscious. As opposed to the ego, with its fixed identity, the subconscious does not have a personality. It is an open book that willingly embodies the content of suggestions, wherever they may originate from.

Healthy leadership by the ego, in the quality of its suggestions to the subconscious, creates the ideal relationship between the two minds. This requires the ego to firstly be in alignment with its Spirit as the arbiter of right action. The ego must also accept the existence of the subconscious mind with all its magical capacities. This is often a tall order for the ego to undertake, which clings to its rationality as ruler and dismisses the greater powers of the subconscious mind.

The ego needn’t believe in the power of the subconscious to access it. Merely rotely repeating a suggestion, ad nauseam, is bound to register eventually as a directive to the subconscious. If I notice a headache brewing, I direct my subconscious with the incessant suggestion that the headache is healing, and is healed. If it disappears, as it often does, I acknowledge the fact of the power of the subconscious to heal.

The ego comes into better relationship with the subconscious when it can expand its rationality to include the fact that the subconscious has abilities that appear to defy logic. Exercising the intentional practice of autosuggestion can produce results that broaden the ego’s reason to include the magical potential of the subconscious mind. Rather than dismiss miracle cures as placebo, scientists would do well to study the factual abilities of the subconscious mind to alter physical events in the body through the power of suggestion.

Reconciliation of mind is ego valuing the subconscious, and consciously feeding it suggestions for the greater good of self, other, and world.

When we leave this life in our soul body, our mental body, of ego and subconscious, will leave as one. As we journey beyond the physical body this reconciled mind is our navigator in the great beyond. Use this life now to bring mind into a partnership to truly serve your evolving soul.

Now and then,*
Chuck

*I am blown away by the magic of the release of the modernly engineered Now and Then, the Beatle’s final song, which is #1 on the musical charts. The generation of now is claiming their own rightful ownership of the Beatle’s Aquarian magic, as well as John Lennon’s soulful reconciliation of relationship. May its energy further permeate the world and its reconciliation of relationship.

Soulbyte for Monday June 21, 2021

What goes up must come down. Notice the dualities in life, how one thing has its opposite, its compensation, how too much of one thing leads to another; how joy has sorrow, plenty has scarcity, calmness has chaos, love has hate. Maintain as much balance in life as possible, within and without, so that the dualities remain in balance too. Without judgment, notice the personal proclivities and imbalances that get you into trouble and seek a natural flow so that one does not want but one does not overdo and slip into imbalance. There is a fine line, but with work on the self balance can be achieved. Instead of telling the self that it’s impossible, start telling the self that everything IS possible.

Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne